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SCIENTIFIC RELIGION 


OK 


HIGHER POSSIBILITIES OF LIFE AND PRACTICE 
THROUGH THE OPERATION OF 
NATURAL FORCES. 


BY 

LAURENCE OLIPHANT. 

- 4 


WITH AN APPENDIX BY A CLERGYMAN OF THE 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 


AUTHORIZED AMERICAN EDITION. 



BUFFALO: 

CHARLES A. WENBORNE. 
1889. 


Entered in the office of the Librarian of Congress, in the year 1889, by 


Chas. A. Wenborne. 



PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 


My husband, having been ill for a number of weeks, is as 
yet unable to put pen to paper ; it therefore devolves upon me 
to write a short introduction to the present edition of “ Scien¬ 
tific Religion.” 

Among the long and numerous criticisms which the book 
has called forth in this country, one objection is often repeated. 
The title is not considered suitable. My husband gave the 
book this name, not because he claimed to have fully dis¬ 
covered and formulated a new science, but because he con¬ 
sidered that he had sufficient data upon which a religion 
might be founded, resting not merely on ephemeral emotion, 
or on blindly dogmatic faith, but on an experimental series 
of spiritual developments which may by degrees be reduced 
to law. 

He believes that religion and science are in no wise 
antagonistic, provided religionists will recognize the fact that 
psychical phenomena are law-governed and not miraculous, 
and that scientists will recognize the fact that spiritual things 
are discerned, not by the senses of the flesh, but by a sub¬ 
surface consciousness which can only be developed through a 
long and arduous spiritual training. Men do not read with 
their ears, nor listen with their eyes, neither can the scientist 
who learns through his surface senses become an authority 
upon that which can only be apprehended through an entirely 
different process of investigation. It is like the student with 
the microscope claiming authority to teach him who uses the 
telescope. 



11 


PREFACE. 


In this sense, therefore, my husband claims his book to be 
scientific because it sets forth in an orderly manner a theory 
which may be proved by experimental effort, provided the 
student have the courage, the endurance, the perseverance, 
and above all the self-abnegation, to carry his investigations 
to their ultimate results. 

It may, perhaps, be of service to my husband’s readers to 
know that the same knowledge had come to me quite apart 
from him, before I had met him or seen his books. On 
reading a letter to a mutual friend in Paris, before “ Scientific 
Religion ” was published, he recognized that we had much in 
common, so much that he decided to visit me in Southern 
Indiana. We found on comparing the manuscript I had 
written with his newly issued work, that the inspiration was 
identical with regard to the whole atomio theory of the 
universe, and the descent of the “ Sympneumatic Life ” in these 
latter days. This corroborative testimony given to a spiritual 
laborer on Mount Carmel, and a fellow-worker in a Western 
village of America, is not only valuable to ourselves, but we 
hope that it will be cheering evidence to others, and I am 
therefore led to make it public. 

It further increases our Hope and Faith in the new dispen¬ 
sation, when we trace the mysterious way in which the hand 
of God has led us one to the other, across thousands of miles, 
in order that we may become fellow-laborers in His Kingdom. 
Although bred in entirely different surroundings, and taught 
through entirely different means, we find that we have 
unconsciously been trained in a common school, and that our 
unity is not only absolute in thought and purpose, but even 
in the sensational consciousness revealing the dual life. 

New and unlooked-for developments have been vouchsafed 
to us since our marriage, chief among them a realization of the 
exquisite union awaiting humanity when all jealousies and 
divisions shall have been merged in the supreme desire to 
become one with our fellow-creatures, and through them with 
our God. We realize that our union, instead of separating 
my husband from the sainted wife whose influence over¬ 
shadowed him as he wrote the pages of this book, has, in 


PREFACE . 


iii 

truth, bound him only the more closely, for she has become 
so atomically welded with me, that we, the wife in the 
unseen and the wife in the seen, have become as one; her life 
is poured through me as an instrument doubling my own 
aifectional consciousness. 

Truly, when we come to realize that all sense of division 
between the fragments of God, called human beings, is an 
utterly false sense, then shall we be prepared for the in-pour¬ 
ing of the perfect, the universal life. 

Whether God purposes to associate my husband and myself 
in long years of labor in the flesh, or whether we shall be in 
an even closer companionship as fellow-workers in the visible 
and invisible worlds, none can tell; but of this we are con¬ 
vinced, for each day’s experience makes it more manifest, a 
new revelation is bursting upon the Earth, and wherever men 
and women are found ready, the consciousness of the 
“ Sympneumatic” Life will develop in an ever-increasing 
force and purity. 

Rosamond Oliphant, 

(born Dale Owen.) 


London, November 16, 1888. 


VI 


PREFACE. 


so soon called upon to publish my grounds for expressing 
this hope; but during a withdrawal of five months last 
summer, into the solitudes of Mount Carmel, I have felt 
myself irresistibly impelled to write the following pages, and 
htey furnish the only answer I can give to my numerous 
critics who are kind enough to regret that I should have left 
the paths of diplomatic and political adventure “to wander 
amidst the phantoms and mirages of the occult science.” 
Only those who have tried both are in a position to judge 
where the phantoms and mirages really are. As, however, 
access to books of reference, with which to support the con¬ 
clusions at which I had arrived, was limited in so remote a 
spot, it was necessary for me to come to England, and my 
researches have more than fulfilled my expectations. 

It has been impossible for me to do justice to the subject 
without intruding my own personality to an extent which 
would have been in the highest degree repellent to me, were 
it not that the results reached, seem to me of such general 
paramount importance as to supersede all other considera¬ 
tions, and that the experimental process by which they 
have been obtained, is a necessary prelude and explanation 
of them. 

Excepting, however, where personal allusions are unavoid¬ 
able, I have dispensed with them; while I earnestly trust 
that, in some minds at all events, the convictions which are 
here embodied as the result of long and arduous struggle and 
effort, may meet with a response. 


LAURENCE OLIPHANT. 


April 1888. 


POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE 


I feel impelled at the last moment to say one word with 
regard to the conditions under which this book was written. 
I had hesitated to do so until it was actually in the hands of 
the binder; but the problems of psychology are forcing them¬ 
selves so strongly upon public attention, that I do not think 
that any experience which may throw light upon them should 
be withheld. 

I became conscious on my arrival at Haifa last spring that 
a book, the plan of which I could not determine, was taking 
form in my mind, and pressing for external expression, and at 
once sat down to write it. I found the attempt to be vain; 
the ideas refused to arrange themselves, and I was strongly 
impressed that they could not do so, unless I went to a 
summer - house I have built in a remote part of Mount 
Carmel, and made the room from which the spirit of my wife 
had passed into the unseen, a little more than a year before, 
my private study, religiously preserving it from intrusion. X 
had no sooner taken my pen in hand under these circum¬ 
stances, than the thoughts which find expression in the fol¬ 
lowing pages were projected into my mind with the greatest 
rapidity, and irrespective of any mental study or prearrange¬ 
ment on my part, often overpowering my own preconceptions, 
and still more often presenting the subject treated of in an 



POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE. 


viii 

entirely new light to myself. On two or three occasions they 
ceased suddenly. I then found it was useless to try and formu-; 
late them by any effort of my brain, and at once abandoned 
the attempt to write for the day. The longest interval of this 
kind was three days. On the fourth I was again able to write 
with facility, and though always conscious of the effort of 
composition, it was never so severe as to cause me to pause 
for more than one or two minutes. 

At the same time there was nothing, so far as I could 
judge, abnormal in my mental or physical condition. I was 
unaffected by trifling interruptions, and the ideas as they pre¬ 
sented themselves seemed to be my own mingled with others 
projected from an unseen source, or new ideas struggling 
with and overpowering old ones with force that I could not 
resist. This must be my apology for a tone of authority 
which I should otherwise have been reluctant to impart to 
this book. 


CONTENTS 


PAET I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

Revolutionary tendency of modern thought—Its bearing upon 
theological dogma—Doubts and unsatisfied moral aspirations 
the result of spiritual quickening — The impending psychic 
crisis, and the moral and physical conflict which will result 
therefrom—Organic changes in man now in progress, . 

CHAPTER I. 

Uncertainty attending all revelation purporting to be divine— 
Causes of this uncertainty—The responsibility of every man 
as the final judge of revelation — None of the most ancient 
revelations attempted to grapple with social and economic prob¬ 
lems—Substitution almost immediately after Christ’s death of 
a desire for personal salvation, in lieu of the practice of daily 
life inculcated by Him—Theosophy, occultism, and mysticism, 
offer no remedy for the world’s malady—Nature of Biblical in¬ 
spiration examined—Later inspirational writings, 

CHAPTER II. 

Recent examination into the nature of the forces latent in the 
human organism—Hypnotic experiments in France, and the 
Psychical Research Society in England, familiarising the scien¬ 
tific mind with forces formerly ignored—Their origin in the 
unseen universe—Former conception of matter modified by 
recent discoveries—Sir Henry Roscoe on atoms—Inseparability 



3L 


CONTENTS. 


of matter and force—Dynaspheric force—Scientific facts valu¬ 
able, conclusions misleading—Hypnotic experiments witnessed 
by me in Paris—Hypnotism recognised by the medical faculty 
in France as dangerous—Spiritual insight necessary to discover 
the nature and origin of these forces, and to qualify the oper¬ 
ator to deal with them, ...... 


CHAPTER III. 

'The interlocking of the invisible atoms of the seen and unseen 
worlds form a single system of animate nature—Glimpses into 
the invisible, conditioned on the moral state of the observer— 
Death a liberation of grosser atoms from those more sublimated 
—Material particles, the vehicles of force, constantly assuming 
new phases —Anima mundi —Interdependence of all created 
nature — Psychical experience attending the composition of 
“Sympneumata”—Duplex cerebral action—Vital atomic inter¬ 
action between the living and the dead—Method of cerebral 
impregnation—Inspirations which do not grapple with the earth- 
malady, worthless—Christ, a radiative centre of healing force— 

The discipline of absolute self-sacrifice essential as a preparation 
to the highest inspiration — Defect in the Eastern systems of 
asceticism, . . . . . . .49 


CHAPTER IV. 

Introduction to the House-book; a treatise on domestic living, by 
the late Mrs Oliphant—Reasons why households should be 
formed to secure the advent of ideal good—Manner of life to be 
neither lavish nor parsimonious—Reasons for this—Religion 
now to be the possession of each man—All born to enact, what 
was formerly taught—Family groups, a machinery for social 
service — Necessity for the protection and nourishment of a 
home — All artificial distinctions of rank, occupations, and 
creeds abolished—Makers and maintainers of the family respon¬ 
sible for its development—The qualities required for social re¬ 
demption—All to stand in sympathy with the laws of society, 
but not to be subjugated by them—Angelic co-operation with 

men — Division of responsibilities — Assistance in labour_ 

Subordination to authority—Notes of expenditure, 

CHAPTER V. 

Insufficiency of the natural reason as a guide to divine truth, be¬ 
cause it cannot divest itself of the ideas of time and space— 


CONTENTS. 


Hence theology and science both blind guides—Man the arena 
of conflicting atomic forces—Transmutation of material forces 
by conversion of moral particles—Methods and manifestations 
of infestation — Atomic constitution of moral atmosphere— 
Phenomena of heredity—Astrology—Will-force under specific 
influence—Faith-healing—Elixir of life—Radiation of divine 
life depends on magnetic conditions — Suffering involved 
thereby—Religion useless as a means to a personal end— 
World - regeneration to be accomplished by a radiation of 
divinely inspired human affection — Inspiration threefold : 
through union with God, man, and nature—Pollution of its 
current threefold: by pride, by selfishness, by apathy — Its 
force depends upon its concentration upon groups animated by 
the same motive, . . . . . . .84 


CHAPTER VI. 

History of the early Christian Church, a record of swift demoralisa¬ 
tion ; partly owing to desire to make converts, and partly to 
the substitution of a future life for present practice—Conflict 
between Rome and the East—Extinction of Gnostic sects de¬ 
structive of much of the deeper truth—Compilation of the 
present canon of Scripture untrustworthy—Apocryphal gospels 
and epistles—“The teaching of the Twelve Apostles”—The 
Book of Enoch—The Church of England on the verge of a 
great moral revolution—The confessions of a parish priest— 

Need of a reformed Christianity, • • • . 102: 

CHAPTER VII. 

Moral pall which shrouds earth’s surface—Deterioration of moral 
atmosphere under invasion of Western civilisation — Christ’s 
Christianity diametrically opposed to that of the Churches— 

False system of religious and secular education—Christendom : 
its politics, commerce, and finance, all on an infernal basis— 
Corruption of its Churches—Blindness and indifference of so- 
called Christians to the inconsistencies of their lives—Christian 
ethics buried under anti-Christian dogmas—A quickening of ' 
conscience taking place among the clergy—Canon Fremantle 
on the “New Reformation,” . . . • .117 

CHAPTER VIII. 

The effect of dogmatic theology upon modern thought—The preju¬ 
dices which it excites—The conflict between science and reli- 


CONTENTS. 


xii 

gion to which it has given rise—Intolerance both of theologians 
and men of science—Bigotry of the latter—Contradictions in 
which they have become involved—Facts of nature, discovered 
by superficial investigations, valuable—Empirical science in¬ 
competent to arrive at the divine truths in nature—This can 
only be achieved by development of inner faculties in man— 
Hence all scientific conjectures and hypotheses worthless—Con¬ 
flicting utterances and conclusions of Professors Huxley and 
Tyndall illustrate this, 


CHAPTER IX. 

Religious systems : their uses and abuses—Aspiration demands in¬ 
spiration—Religions extracted from the husk, instead of the 
kernel of revelation—Impossibility of demonstrating to the 
superficial reason, truths discovered by the inner faculties— 
Various channels and methods of inspiration—Development of 
subsurface consciousness—Magnetic condition of unseen world 
as related to ours—Attraction and repulsion depends on moral 
atomic affinities—Groups in the unseen with which every indi¬ 
vidual in the visible world is affiliated—So also with all 
Churches, religions, and sects—Christian, Buddhist, Moslem, 
and other religious organisations exist in the unseen, and in¬ 
spire those here—Hence divergency of inspiration and religious 
intolerance, ....... 143 


CHAPTER X. 

Force inconceivable except in connection with matter as a trans¬ 
mitting medium—The psyche or “ spiritual body,” the abode of 
the pneuma or “ spirit”—Christ’s birth and death established a 
new atomic relation between the seen and the unseen—The or¬ 
ganisms of the seen and the unseen man described—Their rela¬ 
tion to each other, and the methods of their interaction—The 
phenomena of spiritualism, occultism, hypnotism, telepathy, 
faith-healing, and thought-reading accounted for and explained 
under the operation of natural law—Phenomena unreliable as a 
guide to truth—Craving for it unwholesome and attended with 
danger—Insanity explained—Philosophy of death—Disease not 
an unmixed evil—Popular ideas of heaven, hell, purgatory, 
erroneous—Magnetic contact established between Christ and 

the world, the channel of a new moral reconstructive potency_ 

The human and spiritual magnetic batteries now charged, and 
the consummation at hand—Qualities required in those who 
would co-operate in bringing it about, . . . .159 


CONTENTS. 


Xlll 


CHAPTER XI. 

The relation of man towards God, Christ, and the unseen world, 
here set forth, confirmed by the inner sense of the Bible—All 
sacred books have their hidden sense—Teaching of the Kab¬ 
balah and of the Fathers on this point—Inner sense of Christ’s 
teaching has been lost, and the symbols and externals alone re¬ 
main ; hence superstition, bigotry, and hypocrisy — Frequent 
allusions to the “ mystery ” in the New Testament—St Paul’s 
apprehension of it—The most ancient religions contain it in 
their universal conception of God, as an infinite paternal and 
maternal principle, pervading, animating, and sustaining all 
things by the “ Word”—Judaism, which was an improved ren¬ 
dering of the Egyptian and Chaldean religions, contained it 
concealed in the Mosaic law, of which Christ was the fulfilment 
—Genesis composed and compiled under a most powerful in¬ 
spiration—Mysticism : its uses and abuses, • . .184 

CHAPTER XII. 

Masculine and feminine atomic elements—Sentient and non-sen- 
tient atoms—The Deity of the Bible, as well as of former sacred 
records, masculine and feminine—Effect of the divine mater¬ 
nity on man — Revelation by the Spirit, which is feminine, a 
personal one—This mystery contained in the hidden sense of 
both Old and New Testaments, . • . . .201 

PART II. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

The generation of universes—First chapter of Genesis describes the 
creation by emanation of a previous universe—Analysis of its 
hidden meaning—The rebellion of Lucifer—Archangels or 
Seraphim, and arch-demons or Siddim—The first Adam, or 
Adam Cadmon, ....... 219 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Second chapter of Genesis describes creation by emanation of our 
world — Analysis of its hidden meaning—The birth of bi¬ 
sexual man—Ancient beliefs in his androgynous nature—Story 
of his fall—And separation into two distinct sexes—Structural 
changes consequent thereon, ..... 229 


XIV 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER XV. 

The origin of evil—Mixed conditions in the genesis of earth 
Evolution of the first forms of life, under the opposing influ¬ 
ences of Seraphim and Siddim—The Garden of Eden Mans 
mission—Method of its accomplishment—The earth-malady 
caused by the pollution of its sex-life—Its purification possible 
—Nature of the struggle for purity thus involved, 


CHAPTER XVI. 

The first period of the race—Esoteric sense of the conflict between 
Cain and Abel — The mark of Cain — The introduction of 
physiological birth—Of polygamy—The fate of the Lamech 
races—Invasion of the planet by the Siddim—Their mixed 
progeny—The Book of Enoch—The deluge—Earliest cosmo¬ 
gonic traditions—The golden age, • . « • 


CHAPTER XVII. 

The Noachic race—The guardians of the mystery—Transmitted to 
the Abramic—Magnetic conditions of the Holy Land—The 
Divine Trinity of the early religions—Analogy of the religion of 
Accad with that of the Jews—The secret contained in the law 
of Moses—The fulfilment of the law—Effect of modern criti¬ 
cism on Judaism,....... 271 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

The mission of the Jews—The mystery of the Divine Feminine con¬ 
fided to them—The vision of Isaiah—The Divine Feminine 
enfolded in Christ—The method of His birth—Jewish belief in 
the Messiah—The Virgin Mary—Nature of the descent of the 
feminine principle—Covenants with the Jews—Reasons why 
they should recognise in this principle their Messiah, . . 290- 


CHAPTER XIX. 

The true position of woman—The false position assigned her by 
civilisation—Her new functions in life—The descent of the 
Divine Feminine through her—The co-operative struggle of the 
sexes for purity—Woman’s rights—The true higher education 
of woman, ....... 314 


/ V 


CONTENTS. XV 

CHAPTER XX. 

Method of the descent of the Divine Feminine-^-And of its recep¬ 
tion by woman—The Sympneuma—Introduction of the Divine 
Feminine into the world, through the birth, life, death, resur¬ 
rection, and ascension of Christ—The outpouring on the dis¬ 
ciples on the Day of Pentecost—The sympneumatic conscious¬ 
ness, ........ 326 


CHAPTER XXI. 

The sympneumatic descent—Its infernal simulation—The func¬ 
tion of bisexual atoms — Contact with pneumatic centres — 
Social conventionalities impede male and female co-operation— 
Insane delusions—The relation of Christ to man through woman 
illustrated by St Paul—Kabbalistic interpretations, . . 340 

CHAPTER XXII. 

The twelfth and thirteenth chapters of the Book of Revelation in¬ 
terpreted—The effect of Christ’s mission to earth upon the 
upper invisible region of our world—Concealment of the Divine 
Feminine—The two witnesses—The functions of John the Bap¬ 
tist—His relation to Christ—Temporary triumph of the Infer¬ 
nal Feminine—The Beast, Anti-Christendom, or the Gentile 
Church—The mark of the Beast, the false cross—Man’s pres¬ 
ent relation to Christ, ...... 362 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

The fourteenth and following chapters of Revelation interpreted— 
Collision on earth between the sympneumatic and anti-sym- 
pneumatic forces—Catastrophic changes in consequence—The 
fate of the Siddim—The triumph of the saints—The Second 
Advent, and the descent of the Bride—Recapitulation,. . 379 

Appendix I., Extracts from the Kabbalah, .... 391 

Appendix II., by a Clergyman of the Church of England, . 401 


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SCIENTIFIC RELIGION; 

$ 

OB, 

HIGHER POSSIBILITIES OF LIFE AND PRACTICE 

THROUGH THE 

OPERATION OF NATURAL FORCES. 


INTRODUCTION. 

REVOLUTIONARY TENDENCY OF MODERN THOUGHT—ITS BEARING UPON 
THEOLOGICAL DOGMA — DOUBTS AND UNSATISFIED MORAL ASPIRA¬ 
TIONS THE RESULT OF SPIRITUAL QUICKENING — THE IMPENDING 
PSYCHIC CRISIS, AND THE MORAL AND PHYSICAL CONFLICT WHICH 
WILL RESULT THEREFROM — ORGANIC CHANGES IN MAN NOW IN 
PROGRESS. 

It would be superfluous here to do more than cursorily 
allude to the remarkable moral and intellectual movement 
which has characterised the last half-century; it has been 
resumed in the literature of the jubilee year. The great 
problems of life are assuming a new form, as the theo¬ 
logical landmarks are gradually fading away beneath the 
flood of light which has been let into them by theological 
research, antiquarian discovery, scientific investigation, and 
psychical phenomena; and men in their trouble are peering 
earnestly into the new region which is being thus illumin¬ 
ated, for a new order which they may substitute for the old 
—some vital truth-principle which shall conduce to a purer 

A 



2 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


and nobler social life; for, though the dogmas crumble away 
one after the other, and the dry-rot of ecclesiasticism be¬ 
comes daily more apparent, the religious instinct is more 
quickened than ever, and in proportion as men under its 
influence emancipate themselves from what they now per¬ 
ceive to be the ignorance, prejudice, or superstition of a dark 
age, do their aspirations strain after something higher and 
better, while their belief in the possible realisation of ideals, 
hitherto deemed unattainable, grows stronger. Nevertheless, 
this yearning for, and searching after, higher truth by the 
more advanced minds of the age, is attended by a conscious¬ 
ness of unrest and anxiety, often almost amounting to a vague 
feeling of alarm. There is a sense of chaotic surroundings, 
of unstable footing, of shrinking from the plunge into the 
unknown; and many of the weaker sort, after going a little 
way, become troubled as to their own future, and—deficient 
in such a love for humanity as should induce them to dare all 
for its sake, and in such a faith in God as should lift tiiem 
out of all personal anxieties—they scramble back into what 
they were brought up to believe was an ark of personal 
safety. There they find comparative rest among those whose 
consciences have not yet been stirred to any perception of the 
fearful inconsistencies of their conduct; who distinguish be¬ 
tween things religious and things secular; who are content to 
profess in pulpit and in pew on Sunday, moral axioms which 
they openly violate in almost every act of their daily lives, 
and who do this in all good faith, in the sincere belief that 
they are pleasing God, and following the example of their 
Lord and Master Jesus Christ, and will win for themselves 
heaven thereby. It is because they are in this morally dark¬ 
ened condition—the result mainly of fear of punishment and 
hope of reward—that they shrink appalled from the con¬ 
clusions of modern investigations, and refuse to receive any 
light which should pierce into the gloomy nooks and musty 
corners of their most unchristian creed, and which should force 
upon them an investigation into the errors of their present 
faith, and into the reasons why they are utterly unable to 
carry out in their daily conduct, and not merely to pro¬ 
nounce with their lips, the moral teachings of their nom¬ 
inal Master. 


ECCLESIASTICISM AND SCIENCE. 


3 


In strong contrast with these is the class who live under 
the full blaze of the light to which I have alluded, but who 
are morally unaffected by it. “It is a useful light,” they 
say, “for looking into the past,—it has even some interest 
materially with regard to the present,—but it is useless so 
far as the future is concerned. It has been valuable as 
showing us the extent of our ignorance, and in revealing 
to us the many delusions in which we have been living, but 
it conveys no other truth to us; on the contrary, it presents 
to us insoluble problems with more distinctness than before, 
and it has no power of penetrating these for others, further 
than it penetrates them for us. The limit of our range of 
vision under its influence must necessarily be the limit of 
theirs, and inasmuch as all that it shows us is that we 
don’t know more than it shows us, (which is very little, 
because it does not penetrate below the surface of things, or 
beyond what we call the ‘ material ’), therefore, what is im¬ 
penetrable surface for us must be impenetrable surface for 
everybody else, and what we call the material must be mate¬ 
rial for everybody else, and we refuse to admit that any¬ 
body can see further or have more light than we have.” The 
analogy does not seem to occur to such persons, that some 
people are naturally more short-sighted than others, and are 
obliged to wear spectacles; did they not refuse to admit that 
spectacles exist for facilitating such internal vision as I am 
about to describe, they might possibly be furnished with 
them. In the meantime, there is far more hope for this class 
than for the one with which I have contrasted it, for though 
“ the light that is in them is darkness,” they have the hon¬ 
esty to say so,—moreover, the light is in them unconsciously 
to themselves, and may burst out at any moment; but the 
others, more especially in the countries where the Greek 
or Roman Catholic religions prevail, have created their own 
darkness out of the bigotries, the superstitions, ignorance, 
and cruelty of ages, and they wrap it round them and call 
it light. 

There is another class, again, who are not troubled by the 
problems of life; who consider that the pursuit of pleasure, 
fame, or wealth is the sane, laudable, and reasonable occupa¬ 
tion of a human being, inasmuch as, for aught they know, 


4 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


they may have no continuity of existence beyond this life. 
They ordinarily profess so-called Christianity, nevertheless* 
as a matter of convenience, but differ from the ardent votaries 
of that cult, in that they are governed by an enlightened 
selfishness as to the present, instead of as to the hereafter. 
They also are in a more hopeful condition than these lat¬ 
ter ; for their consciences are torpid, not perverted, and are 
therefore more susceptible to the electric shock of the divine 
touch. 

Far be it from me to say, however, that there are not 
thousands still embedded in existing forms of ecclesiasticism, 
who are daily becoming more highly sensitised morally; whose 
aspirations are as noble, whose loves are as pure, whose mo¬ 
tives are as disinterested, as those of any of the earnest and 
devout truth-seekers and unbelievers in the popular theology; 
but this is in spite of its dogmas, not in consequence of them. 
Such men have always existed in the period immediately pre¬ 
ceding reform in any religion, but they have always had the 
masses of their co-religionists against them; and indications 
of an approaching schism of a far more profound character 
than any of which we have any historical record since the 
disciples were first called Christians at Antioch, are apparent 
to those who watch the spiritual horizon. To them a cloud 
bigger than a man’s hand is visible above it. 

For the processes of the divine quickening are moving 
steadily forward, generating vital impulses which will prove 
uncontrollable to those who come under their influence, and 
suggesting an irresistible instinct for aggregation. Upon all 
classes, and in diverse countries, taking no account of race, 
or creed, or colour, does this new life descend; and as those 
who are stirred by it move, do they recognise their affinity to 
others similarly affected, and the magnetic attraction which is 
inherent in the vivifying principle, draws them together, at 
present slowly and athwart obstacles that would seem insur¬ 
mountable—for in the early stages the recipients of this life 
feel weak and bewildered. Crushed by the weight of dry 
bones around them and above them, their first struggles are 
feeble and misdirected; they know not in which direction to 
look for help; the old deadness seems still to chain them to 
the spot where they first felt the vital touch, and yet they long 


NEW VITAL IMPULSES. 


5 


above all things to leave it. Progress they feel is impossible 
in the midst of the old surroundings. The atmosphere feels 
-charged with mephitic vapour, which sometimes appears even 
to interfere with the ordinary respiration. There is a sensa¬ 
tion of struggle between the new life and the old, and the po¬ 
tency of the descending vigours seems at times as though it 
would destroy the outer bodily frame. It is the putting “ the 
new wine into the old bottles,” but the new wine takes no 
account of the condition of the bottle. Often it bursts it, and 
the spirit, vitalised and released, leaves its earthly shell, to 
carry on, from another vantage-point, the same work for 
humanity on this globe, which would have been allotted to it 
in its fleshly tabernacle. 

It would be hopeless, however, to attempt to give any com¬ 
plete description of the mode of operation of this new life- 
principle, for in no two cases are the phenomena which attend 
its descent into the human organism similar in their manifes¬ 
tation, while each who has been conscious of its influence 
has a varied experience to recount. 

With some, as I have said, it produces what may be called 
a life-and-death struggle; with others the physical organism 
does not suffer, while the moral anguish is acute; with some 
it is sudden, and seems to overwhelm and paralyse by the 
intensity of the shock; with others, it steals over them so 
slowly and so gradually—the preparation for its reception has 
been spread over so long a period of time—that there is com¬ 
paratively little suffering, as the first perception of the change 
which is being operated dawns upon the consciousness. Sooner 
or later, however, spiritual suffering must ensue, though this 
varies much in degree, depending on moral conditions which 
it is not necessary now to enter upon. The main point upon 
which I wish to insist is the fact, with regard to which I have 
had abundant evidence during the last quarter of a century 
—and not I alone—that a spiritual wave is at present rolling 
in upon the world of a character unprecedented in its past 
history; that it is daily gathering force, and is already crest 
high. Before very long it will break; and the object of this 
book is to prepare men’s minds for a crisis in the history of 
the planet which cannot, I think, be very long deferred, but 
which will take a very different form from that which is 


6 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


usually anticipated; for it is anticipated—anticipated in all 
the existing forms of religion, down to those which may 
almost be called heathen superstitions — anticipated by a 
dumb instinct in the minds of men who cannot be said to 
have any religion. It is in the air; and only those of a pecu¬ 
liarly dense and unsusceptible temperament are absolutely 
without consciousness of it. It will be a moral rather than 
a physical crisis; and its tendency will be (to use a Scriptural 
expression) to separate the sheep from the goats, and to bind 
together, in a way which no Churches have ever succeeded in 
doing, those who fight for the Powers of Light against those 
who fight for the Powers of Darkness. It will sweep away 
the present ecclesiasticisms, and substitute for them a re¬ 
ligion in which there shall be “one body that hath many 
‘ members, and all the members of that one body, being many, 
‘ shall be one body. So also is Christ. Por by one spirit we 
‘ shall all be baptised into one body, whether we be Jews or 
‘ Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and we shall all be 
* made to drink into one Spirit .” 1 Now this one body can 
only be created, under the influence of that one vitalising 
principle to which I have already referred, by the strenuous- 
co-operation and ardent effort of those who are conscious that 
they have received it, and the effort to create it will entail 
a struggle of stupendous proportions with the corrupt prin¬ 
ciple to which the misery and degradation of the world has 
been due. It is this struggle which will be so critical for the 
human race, for it involves an issue of inconceivable magni¬ 
tude, and must be carried on under conditions which will 
develop many new and terrible experiences, and call into 
operation laws which have been more or less hidden from 
scientific investigation, though of late years these have been 
dimly perceived, and in a superficial manner experimented 
upon by some of the first scientific men in Europe. In a 
word, it will be a psychical rather than a physical conflict,, 
though I do not mean to say that the ordinary weapons of 
so-called “civilised warfare” will not be called into re¬ 
quisition. 

Now many have received, and are receiving, accessions of 
the special potency which shall enable them to engage in this 

1 Romans xii. 4. 5 ; 1 Corinthians xii. 12, 13. 


PSYCHIC CONFLICT. 


7 


warfare, without any due conception of its nature. They are 
conscious of a moral disturbance within them, of new ex¬ 
periences which they shrink from alluding to, and of which 
in some instances they even entertain a certain feeling of 
dread. Sometimes new light dawns upon them, relieving them 
of moral perplexity—at others, new sensations stir their ner¬ 
vous centres; they rise at times to conditions of exaltation 
which fill them with joy for which there is no adequate ex¬ 
ternal cause, or sink into profound depths of despondency 
equally unaccountable. They may even be treated for hys¬ 
teria by their doctors, who are none the less profoundly 
puzzled to know what hysteria is, and totally in the dark 
on the subject. All these are indications that they are being 
subject to the influences which are about to make war against 
each other in human organisms, and that the moment has 
come when those who know, or think they know, what these 
signs of the times mean, should not be deterred from throw¬ 
ing whatever light may have been vouchsafed upon it, by 
the hostile criticism of the majority—whose intelligence, by 
reason of their organic denseness, is still beclouded upon the 
subject. But before attempting to do this, it is expedient 
that I should explain how this light may be gained; for rays 
are shot athwart the spiritual firmament from opposing direc¬ 
tions—lurid rays from below, flickering rays of many colours 
and from many diverse quarters. To no human being has it 
ever been given to transmit untainted the white ray that issues 
from the throne of the Most High, for our world could not 
bear the fierceness of its splendour. All revelation which 
proceeds from the invisible must be relative in its value, all 
inspiration imperfect. It behoves us, therefore, to consider, 
in our search after divine truth, how we are to judge of the 
value of revelation, and to arrive in our minds at a definite 
idea of what we mean by “ inspiration.” 

I shall endeavour in the following pages to discuss the 
functions and characteristics of those subtle atomic forces in 
nature, which are now attracting increased attention on the 
part of the learned and the thoughtful,—show how they act 
upon man morally, intellectually, and physically; or, in other 
words, in what sense they stimulate his aspirations, control 
his inspirations, and affect his bodily health,—and consider 


8 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


further their practical bearing upon those biological and theo¬ 
logical theories and problems which tend at present to confuse 
his religious instinct, and cloud his perceptions of the beauti¬ 
ful, the good, and the true. 

Finally, I will offer the solution of those problems and 
theories which, under the operation of these forces, has been 
revealed to me. 

I would only say in conclusion, that it would not be right for 
any man, desiring to know whether this inspiration is true or 
not, to begin by believing it after the manner of the Churches: 
no belief can stand in these days that is not based upon the 
evidence of personal experience. These are not things that 
one man can prove to another; all he can do is to say, that 
in all cases where certain experiments have been faithfully 
made, they have been attended with the same results. It is 
left to each to make them or not, as he chooses; but I should 
be highly culpable,—having tested them in my own person, 
having seen them tested in the persons of others, and having 
received what I feel to be a strong internal direction to place 
before others the conclusion at which I have arrived,—to allow 
myself to be deterred from doing so by any sense of my own 
incapacity to do justice to so great a theme—which is pro¬ 
found—by any fear of the hostility or ridicule which it may 
excite, or by any anticipation of failure to reach the hearts 
of those to whom it is addressed. The issues are with God, 
and His servants know not the word disappointment, for they 
are incapable of reading His designs. Only this they know, 
that the slightest hesitation in obeying what they believe to 
be a divine impulse, produces a suffering more intense than 
any consequences which may accrue to them from the world. 
If, in my attempt to exhibit the dangers to which moral pro¬ 
gress is exposed by the present methods of theology and 
science, and their antagonism to each other, I have spoken 
more hardly of the two classes engaged in these pursuits than 
the circumstances seem to warrant, it has not been from any 
want of the deepest respect for good men wherever they are 
to be found, or however much in error they may appear to 
me to be. 

Error is only dangerous when it is aggressive—and to 


PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 


9 


meet error of this description, when one is convinced by 
one’s own personal experience that it is error, a certain 
attitude of aggression seems to be imposed upon one; but 
it is consistent with an entire tolerance and charity for 
individuals, and is, in fact, only applicable to those who are 
thoroughly honest and in earnest, even if their earnestness 
be misdirected. 


10 


CHAPTER I. 

UNCERTAINTY ATTENDING ALL REVELATION PURPORTING TO BE DIVINE: 
—CAUSES OF THIS UNCERTAINTY—THE RESPONSIBILITY OF EVERY 
MAN AS THE FINAL JUDGE OF REVELATION—NONE OF THE MOST 
ANCIENT REVELATIONS ATTEMPTED TO GRAPPLE WITH SOCIAL AND 
ECONOMIC PROBLEMS—SUBSTITUTION ALMOST IMMEDIATELY AFTER 

Christ’s death ©f a desire for personal salvation in lieu of 

THE PRACTICE OF DAILY LIFE INCULCATED BY HIM—THEOSOPHY,. 
OCCULTISM, AND MYSTICISM, OFFER NO REMEDY FOR THE WORLD’S 
MALADY—NATURE OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION EXAMINED—LATER IN¬ 
SPIRATIONAL WRITINGS. 

The main cause of religious difference at all times has arisen 
from the attempt to define the indefinable, and this has neces¬ 
sarily involved the use of terms either not susceptible of 
accurate definition, or for which none could be found by com¬ 
mon consent. 

By the use of precise terms, on the exact meaning of which 
everybody was agreed, angry theologians would have often 
been saved the disagreeable duty—imposed upon them, as 
they believed, by their consciences and their love for God 
and their fellows—of flying at each other’s throats, and many 
stumbling-blocks would have been removed from the path 
of earnest truth-seekers. This latter daily increasing class 
refuse to be satisfied with ancient theological formulae and 
unproven hypotheses. The fact that they happen to be 
born in a country in which a certain form of faith has pre¬ 
vailed for a certain number of centuries, is no longer a con¬ 
vincing reason that that form of faith must be the right 
one. They have gone back in their investigations, behind 
what has been considered the only sacred record of divine 
truth, to see what the most ancient peoples believed before 


INSPIRATION NOT INFALLIBLE. 


11 


that record was compiled; for they remember that it is 
written therein, “In the beginning was the Word,” and 
that the great Teacher said, “ Before Abraham was, I am; ” 
and they know that before Abraham was, mighty nations 
existed, with their aspirations after God and their worship 
of Him, and that He must therefore have revealed Himself 
to them in some form or other long before the law was given 
to the Jews. They have gone forward in their investigations 
into the domain of psychical science, and have encountered 
phenomena which throw new light upon the faith of their 
childhood, and which force upon them considerations which 
seem to increase their responsibilities to a degree unknown to 
a previous generation. When so much doubt is cast upon 
the old belief, when so many new possibilities for belief 
of another kind are springing into existence, it becomes a 
matter of supreme importance to consider the processes by 
which God has revealed Himself to man, and to estimate 
the values which are to be attached to those processes. 

Revelation purporting to be divine has always come through 
human instrumentality, and it has differed according to the 
race, country, moral condition, and temperament of the trans¬ 
mitting medium, and the people to whom it was addressed. 
Whatever may subsequently have been the view of the 
disciples concerning the greatest teachers that the world has 
seen, as to their superhuman natures, there was nothing to 
distinguish them, as far as we know, in outward appearance,, 
from other men. They depended for their authority on their 
words and on their acts; so their words were considered in¬ 
spired, their acts miraculous. The disciples of the founders 
of all the principal religions of the world, have appealed to- 
the wonders that their masters could perform, as an evi¬ 
dence of the truth of their teaching; and it is only since 
modern investigation has ventured into the regions of the- 
psychical and the occult, that men are beginning to perceive 
that thaumaturgy possesses no value as an evidence for or 
against moral truth, and that the word “ miracle ” is mislead¬ 
ing, if by that term is implied a violation of the laws of 
nature; as is also the term “ inspiration,” if by that word is. 
implied an infallible communication to man from God. 

It does not follow from this, however, that God does not 


12 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


•communicate with man, and that the communications do not 
receive strong confirmation, to the recipient of them, through 
the operation of laws which have hitherto been concealed 
from the ordinary man, of a nature which he, ignorant of 
these laws, might term miraculous. It was not to be won¬ 
dered at that in an age when the intellect had not been 
divorced from the affections to the extent that it is now, and 
when the emotional and intuitive faculties were more highly 
developed, the tendency was towards superstition, and towards 
the recognition, in the exercise of occult powers, of the direct 
intervention of a Divine Being, and in the utterances of men 
thus gifted, of the voice of God. 

The tendency of modern philosophy is to react to the 
•exactly opposite extreme; to deny the existence of occult 
powers altogether, and to consider the most lofty utterances 
of men nothing more than the result of chemical changes 
in their brains, which thus inspire the ideas which they put 
into words. 

The truth will be found to be between these two extremes; 
and this imposes upon us the consideration, which is vital to 
those engaged in the pursuit of divine knowledge, of the real 
meaning of inspiration. 

No attempt, so far as I am aware, has ever been made by 
theologians to analyse the process by which the will of God 
is conveyed to the mind of man with such certainty that the 
human recipient shall not be mistaken as to the divine source, 
and that his fellow-men should not be mistaken as to the 
claims of the human recipient. It always resolves itself into 
this—that each man must himself be the supreme judge and 
arbiter of whether what is so conveyed, is, or is not, a com¬ 
munication from God. This is a fearful responsibility laid 
upon every man; and yet how few realise that there can 
be no higher test of inspiration for any man than he is 
himself: from this position there is no escape. If he at¬ 
tempts to shirk the responsibility by saying, “ I will accept 
in this matter the teaching of the Church in which I was 
born,” he only increases it; for he then becomes the final 
judge of the claims of the Church in which he was born to 
decide upon what is and what is not divine inspiration; and 
in determining to abdicate his own right to judge, in favour 


AUTHORITY AND RESPONSIBILITY. 1& 

of another authority, upon him alone rests the responsibility 
of deciding upon the competence of that authority. It is. 
thus that God lays upon each one of us the obligation of find¬ 
ing out truth for ourselves. 

It will probably be urged that this obligation is incompat¬ 
ible with the multifarious duties of daily life—that it would 
be unreasonable to expect that the masses in their ignorance,, 
in their struggle for existence, and the absorbing cares which 
it involves, should devote themselves to theological research, 
should study the sacred records of all religions, and that each 
unit should decide for himself or herself, upon the respective 
claims of revelations professing to be divinely inspired. If 
divine truth were to be discovered by a study of “ divinity/' 
in the sense in which that term is used among Christian 
theologians, or by contemplation, as enjoined by the religions- 
of the East, the task would indeed be hopeless, and the ob¬ 
jection would be unanswerable; but I propose to show that 
it is not a question of judging of rival existing inspirations, 
but of every man receiving his own message for himself in a 
fuller manner than he can obtain it from any book or from 
any pulpit; and that in proportion as he is prepared to make 
every sacrifice in order to receive it, will he gain strength to- 
fulfil his daily round of duties even to their most minute de¬ 
tails. The days of bibliolatry and of priestcraft are draw¬ 
ing to an end; for with the descent of the divine vital 
principle to which I have alluded in the last chapter—and 
which the Churches call the Messiah — into every man’a 
organism who opens himself to receive, it, will he rise out of 
ecclesiasticisms, with their forms and ceremonies, into “ the 
liberty wherewith Christ has made him free.” 

It must not be concluded from this, however, thar the Bible 
and the Churches have not been of inestimable value to hu¬ 
manity, while they have no less been the cause of sanguinary 
wars and bitter persecutions. Without venturing to question 
the divine methods of operation with man, or to enter upon 
any attempt of an exposition of the laws by which those- 
methods are governed, we can recognise in the sacred litera¬ 
ture which has inspired the world with its religious senti¬ 
ment, however crude or distorted, the divine afflatus; and in 
its varied forms of worship, the most powerful restraining 


14 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


influence which their adherents were capable of obeying in 
their daily lives. In all cases the sacred record and the 
sacred rites, with the functions of the ministry, were adapted 
to the moral and intellectual condition of those for whom 
they were intended. It is because these moral and intel¬ 
lectual conditions have undergone such vast changes during 
this century, that the book and the Churches which have 
guided and controlled the nations of the West so long, must 
be interpreted and renewed by the light of fresh revelations, 
and by a more direct outpouring of the divine vitality upon 
human organisms than they have been heretofore prepared 
for,—revelations, the truth of which each man can test for 
himself, and which will rest on the experiences which he 
himself must make in his search after them; for the time 
has arrived when he refuses any longer to put his conscience 
in the hands of a priest, or unintelligently to accept dogmas 
because he was taught them in his childhood, or to blind 
himself to the anomalies and inconsistencies which certain 
doctrines involve, and which are so faithfully reflected in the 
daily lives of those who profess them. 

The reason why the inspirations upon which the most 
ancient religions were founded, so often contradicted them¬ 
selves and each other, and why their prophets so often pro¬ 
phesied falsely, was because they had lost sight of the great 
truth, that the highest inspiration comes through physical as 
well as intellectual service for the race; for the laws which 
govern the transmission of moral potency into man, are so 
interwoven with those which control the development of his 
physical energies, and the purest life influxes are so con¬ 
ditioned on the equal distribution of its currents through the 
physical, affectional, and intellectual human systems, that 
the undue expansion of any one of these at the expense of 
the others, must of necessity distort the ultimate manifesta¬ 
tion, whether in word or deed. Hence we find that with all 
the beauties of the earliest religious expressions, there is the 
fatal defect of unpracticality. Not one of them attempts a 
radical, political, social, and industrial reform with the hope 
of striking at the root of the world’s evil. 

The most ancient religious records which exist are the 
Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Accadian and earliest Ye- 


ANCIENT RELIGIONS. 


15 


dantic hymns, which contain mythical accounts of the struggles 
of divinely inspired heroes with the Powers of Darkness; 
symbolising in mystical language the cosmogony of the world 
and the progress of the human soul towards perfection ; con¬ 
cealing, in images incomprehensible to the people, many truths 
of deep spiritual import, the true meaning of which have 
only been partially retained by the initiated. In them may 
be traced analogies to the mysteries concealed in the Druid, 
Chaldean, Persian, Jewish, Greek, and other ancient minor 
religious communities; but while some of these incul¬ 
cated morality of the highest character, and while even those 
among them which ultimately degenerated into the worship 
of many gods, retained in their essence the worship of the 
one true God, they did not grapple with the social and 
economic problems of life. They made no attempt to con¬ 
struct society upon a basis which should enable men to give 
practical effect to it in their daily lives. With the suppres¬ 
sion of the mystical sects in the early Christian Church, and 
with the inauguration upon a substantial basis of the present 
system of Christian ecclesiasticism, about the close of the 
second century after Christ, the so-called “ heresies,” which 
were the legacy that oriental mysticism had bequeathed to 
the West, gradually faded ; and with them some of the deep 
internal truths which they contained, notwithstanding their 
many errors and exaggerations, were lost. Henceforward re¬ 
ligion in the West became, not the repository of occult know¬ 
ledge of mysteries more or less divine, but a system by which 
men were assured of their escape from eternal torments, and 
their safe passage to endless joys. While incidentally pure 
life and right conduct were enjoined, it was only as a means 
to this end; and as it was evident that no man could by his 
own efforts win the immortal crown for which all were striv¬ 
ing, they were consoled by the further assurance that this 
was already achieved for those who would believe that God 
had sacrificed Himself (or His Son who was Himself) on the 
cross for the purpose. The whole tendency of this teaching 
was to fix men’s minds far more intensely upon the future 
than upon the present; and as its cardinal principle in re¬ 
gard to the future was the selfish attainment of everlast¬ 
ing bliss, it followed as a natural consequence in most 


16 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


cases, that their object in the present life was to secure 
to themselves earthly happiness, or, if they feared that 
this might injure their eternal wellbeing, to lead them 
into asceticism. 

This religion of selfishness has practically stimulated com¬ 
petition for the acquisition of money, because it is considered 1 , 
the chief ingredient of that earthly happiness; and the result 
has been a steady progress in the arts both of peace and war,, 
and that strange compound of vast accumulations of wealthy 
of hideous depths of misery, poverty, and degradation, of 
luxury and squalor, of gigantic industrial and commercial 
enterprise, of huge standing armies and most formidable in¬ 
ventions for the destruction of human life, of rapid means- 
of communication, of extraordinary intellectual activity, of 
international rivalries, jealousies, and lust of territory, and 
of universal competition, inciting to new forms of dishonesty, 
and new impulsions to hate, which goes by the name of 
“ Christian civilisation.” So far from there being any tend¬ 
ency in this outcome of so-called Christianity to build up- 
society, its whole scope is toward its disintegration, and we- 
are at this day trembling on- the verge of a social revolu¬ 
tion, which even physically as well as morally threatens to 
explode it. 

The consequence is that the increasing hold which their 
material interests have acquired over men’s minds, combined 
with the progress which has been made in external science, 
to the utter exclusion of all knowledge except that based on 
what they can see and feel, has produced a materialistic 
movement, which the Churches—to which indirectly it was 
primarily due—are utterly unable to stem, except in those- 
parts of Eastern Europe where the people are still immersed 
in the grossest ignorance and superstition; and here it is only 
a matter of time. 

The result of nearly 1900 years of Christianity is, that if 
Christ were to appear in the flesh in Christendom He would 
be unable to find a follower; for His literal moral teaching 
is practically ignored, and He could certainly not call Him¬ 
self a Christian. He would be more at home among the 
people of His own race, for they only crucified Him once, but. 
the Christians crucify Him daily. As, however, no human 


RESULTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 


17 


invention could extinguish the vitality of the seed which He 
planted in the world during His short term of existence upon 
it, the nature of which will be discussed later, the civilisation 
which calls itself by His name has still more divine life in 
it than the relative barbarism of the East. Under its influ¬ 
ence alone is woman seeking her true position, though she 
has not yet found it; and in Christendom alone is there a 
burning desire on the part of a growing class of men and 
women, to rise out of the sham into the realisation of the 
true Christianity, to embody the ideal life at any personal 
sacrifice, and to spare neither money nor energy, fame nor 
position, if so be that by their efforts they might contribute 
towards laying a single stone of the foundations of a social 
system in which the relations of man to woman, and of man 
to his fellow-man, should be divinely regulated, and which 
should be built upon the corner-stones of sex-purity and 
mutual co-operation. 

Hence it is that the Eastern races, with their mystical 
religions which neither terrify nor bribe, have lagged behind 
so-called Christendom. They have neither risen so high nor 
fallen so low; they have not conceived of new virtues nor 
invented new vices, for they had no spurs to goad them in 
either direction; they continue to treat sacred things with a 
genuine reverence and respect, while hypocrisy may be con¬ 
sidered a Christian speciality; and, excepting so far as they 
have been influenced by the education introduced by their 
conquerors, they live in the daily moral practice of their 
ancestors. At the same time it is probable, to judge from 
their sacred books, that the general standard was higher 
when they were written; for men in the ancient times were 
evidently more open to occult influences than they have been 
in these more recent centuries, and it was doubtless this fact 
which produced that tendency to mysticism which proved in 
the end highly detrimental to moral, intellectual, or material 
progress. For already in the Yedantic period we find the 
practice of asceticism enjoined as essential to the mystical 
union of man with God; while Buddha, despite his intense 
sympathy for the sufferings of humanity, can suggest nothing 
better to his disciples than to practise self-hypnotisation by 
sitting under a bo-tree, and induce pious contemplation by 


18 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


keeping, their eyes fixed on the tips of their noses. So in the 
fifth century we hear of Christian mystics gazing at their 
stomachs until they saw the light of Tabor issuing. The 
consequence of the special diet and of the solitary practices 
thus enjoined, was naturally to dead to trance obsession, which 
resulted in an inspiration that has proved of no earthly bene¬ 
fit to the human race, and which finds expression among its 
votaries in England, in such specific directions for obtaining 
a knowledge of divine truth as these— 

“Hold fast to that which has neither substance nor ex- 
* istence. 

“ Listen only to the voice which is soundless. 

“ Look only on that which is invisible alike to the inner 
4 and the outer sense.” 1 

Doubtless a chief fascination of mysticism with a large 
class of minds was the phenomenal development of certain 
faculties which men acquired, in the degree in which they 
succeeded in overcoming all natural appetites, and divinely 
implanted ljuman instincts: the power of levitation, of sup¬ 
pressed respiration for incredible periods, of control over 
material substances, and of performing many other wonders, 
was calculated to impress the ignorant, and invest them with 
supernatural attributes and authority, which, in spite of the 
unselfishness that they practised theoretically, was gratify¬ 
ing to the natural man. 

Those who deny the possibility of such phenomena can 
satisfy themselves on the subject by personal experiment, 
provided always .hat they have faith. Let any English 
philosopher, who is ready to make the necessary sacrifice, 
begin by accepting the hypothesis as possible that he can 
upset the laws of gravitation and sit in the air, or otherwise 
perform so-called miracles; let him go to India and sit for 
ten or fifteen years under a bo-tree, staring most of the time 
at one object; let him live on nothing but lentils and water, 
with perhaps a little fruit, avoid all contact with his fellow- 
man, practise constantly holding his breath, and sleep as little 
as possible; it will not be long before he will pass occasion¬ 
ally into states of semi-consciousness to external things, which 
he will plainly distinguish from sleep, and if he does not die 
1 Light on the Path, p. 22. 



ASCETICS AND MYSTICS. 


19 


in the process (which he probably will not do if his faith is 
strong enough), he will find himself at last developing forces 
undreamed of in his philosophy. Until he has done so he is 
not in a position to deny the existence or the extent of poten¬ 
cies which are latent in the human organism, in the face of 
the testimony of those who have investigated these phenomena 
on the spot, and of such well-known instances as that of the 
“ burying fakir ”; upon whom the experiment was officially 
conducted with every possible precaution by the Government 
of India. 

There has never been much difficulty in recruiting the 
Tanks of ascetics in India; and in proportion as they pass 
beyond this life into the other, and increase in numbers 
there, does their action upon this world become more power¬ 
ful. Hence it is that we have seen within the last few years 
a movement in the direction of ancient oriental mysticism, 
which would not have been possible did not a very powerful 
society exist in the invisible world, which has taken advan¬ 
tage of the increased attenuated condition of the odylic sphere 
of this one to make an inroad into it. At the same time, the 
revival of mysticism on its old lines, at this period of the 
world’s history, is not possible. Had it nothing to contend 
against but materialism and ecclesiasticism, the struggle might 
not be unequal; but there is another spiritual descent taking 
place more powerful than that which has developed into 
theosophic, hermetic, spiritualistic, and occult societies, and 
which, though working silently and apparently slowly, is none 
the less surely gathering its forces, not merely in the unseen 
world, but in the organisms of men and women in this one. 

As the heat which this new life generates, and the light 
which streams from it, warms and irradiates the world, the 
latest scientific theory will share the fate of the oldest 
theological superstition, or the newest fashion of mysticism 
and the evolution of man from amoebae, his eternal punish¬ 
ment in torments, in spite of the attempt of God to save 
him from them by suffering death, and the journey yet in 
store for him through successive “rounds,” before he can 
hope to reach Nirvana, will all alike be relegated to the 
limbo of exploded fallacies; for a divine science will be 
built upon the ddbris of that which is purely human and 


20 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


superficial, a divine religion replace that which nas been 
degraded by man’s inventions, and divine mysteries supersede 
those which have been derived from sources more or less 
impure. The reason why this will he so is, that the growing 
desire to find truth will lead men to seek from God their own 
inspirations, and in the degree in which that desire is sincere 
and absolutely disinterested, they will find themselves mag¬ 
netically attracted to each other by an impulse of co-operation 
in its pursuit, and will discover that mutual unselfish service 
is the first condition of the highest internal illumination: 
provided always that the mind is kept entirely free from 
prejudice or preconceived opinions; that the affections are 
emancipated from the thraldom which is imposed by ties 
of race, country, or family, in order that they may be 
bestowed freely upon humanity; and that, while it may be 
necessary for them to live in the world, they have internally 
dissevered themselves from it so completely, that they are 
uninfluenced by its public opinion, totally unaffected by its 
censure, and absolutely indifferent to its praise, with which, 
indeed, it is extremely improbable that they would be 
favoured. 

In order to make clear the nature of this new inspiration, 
it will be necessary to describe its mode of operation, and 
discuss and contrast it with the old. The reason why old 
inspirations were defective, and the religions founded upon 
them degenerated so rapidly into superstitions, was because 
an equilibrium was not maintained between the physical, 
intellectual, and emotional functions—in other words, between 
body, soul, and spirit. Prophets were generally poets, often 
dreamers, rarely thinkers, never workers. It was to intensify 
this faculty of peering into the future, or, in other words, of 
looking into the world of substance—of which, though invis¬ 
ible to us, this is merely the shadow—and, by perceiving what 
was happening there, foretelling what would happen here 
(time being merely relative to our shadowy present, and 
having no real existence in itself), that they developed ex¬ 
clusively one side of their nature. But inasmuch as when 
they saw visions and dreamed dreams, they were in special 
conditions differing from those of other men, partly the 
result of heredity or constitutional temperament, and partly 


METHODS OF INSPIRATION. 


21 


induced by fasting and self-hypnotisation, it was impossible 
for them to know whether what they saw, or what was im¬ 
pressed upon them during these states, was real or phantas¬ 
magoric. The unseen world teems with intelligences, whose 
action upon this one is very direct, and is governed by laws, 
most of which are hidden from us, and those which are 
known, imperfectly known only to the few, and not yet 
comprehensible to the many. A man thus open to that 
world, becomes a point of attraction, round which invisible 
hosts cluster, some with the desire of infusing into his mind, 
or presenting to his internal vision fallacies, or pictorial rep¬ 
resentations of them, others with the desire of protecting 
him against these malignant attempts to deceive, and of con¬ 
veying to him images of truth. In other words, the powers 
of light and the powers of darkness war over him. But 
inasmuch as the laws which govern the projection of these 
impressions or images upon the mind, mainly depend upon 
the condition of the recipient, just as the representation con¬ 
veyed to a photograph-plate depends upon the method with 
which that plate has been prepared, as well as upon the con¬ 
ditions of light, exposure, and so forth, so it is evident that 
upon no two different people would it be possible for those 
in the invisible world to cast precisely the same impression, 
because no two people are precisely similar in constitution 
and temperament, nor could they possibly prepare them¬ 
selves, as photographic plates are prepared, so as to be in 
exactly the same state of receptivity. 

I am not now talking of apparitions and elemental forms, 
or of phenomena, such as that of the transfiguration on the 
mount, or the appearance of Christ to His disciples after the 
resurrection,—these belong to a class of manifestation which 
appeal to the external senses. The conditions incidental to 
deep insight and lofty inspirations are, moreover, totally dif¬ 
ferent from those known to ordinary “ spirit mediums,” who, 
finding themselves appropriately constituted, use the faculty 
they possess, in the case of those who are unprincipled, either 
as a source of profit, a means of imposture or amusement, or, 
in the case of those who are honest and well-principled, as 
a means of conveying such imperfect impressions from the 
other world as they think may benefit this one; but dur- 


22 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


ing forty years of modern Western spiritualism these have 
rarely proved of any practical value, from the fact that 
those obtaining them hardly ever go through the long and 
painful ordeals which are a necessary preparation for the 
reception of the higher truths. 

Thus all prophets and seers who have at any time given 
such spiritual light to the world that men have felt the 
divine element in it, and incorporated their teaching into- 
their sacred books, have been almost invariably recluses and 
anchorites, and one may almost add, that in the degree in 
which they have been so, have their utterances been obscure 
and unintelligible to the common herd; on the other hand, 
thos^ who have conveyed moral teaching in language which 
contained such an element of divine life in it, as to pro¬ 
duce upon men the impression that they were inspired, have 
been, more or less, thinkers and workers—as, for instance, 
in the case of Christ the carpenter, and Paul the tent-maker. 
It is evident that the latter was conscious of different pro¬ 
cesses during composition—one in which he says, I speak this 
of myself; and the other, where the projection on his mind 
was so strong that he attributed it to the Lord. This was 
not to be wondered at, when we consider how pure and full 
of a lofty spiritual impulse his moral teaching often was. 
Not knowing the laws which govern inspiration, it was nat¬ 
ural, when he felt a noble sentiment projected into his mind, 
which did not seem to emanate from it spontaneously, that 
he should attribute it directly to God—being ignorant of the 
fact that all divine perceptions are only allowed to reach us 
from the Infinite through the channels provided for it, and 
that these are angelic, and can only imperfectly convey to 
us conceptions which have to be tempered, as they descend, 
to meet the imperfect condition of the human instrument 
through which they are transmitted; this human instrument 
Deing tainted by all sorts of impurity, warped by all manner 
of prejudice, seeing them only as through a glass darkly, with 
all the original brightness of their lustre dimmed, and with 
the reflection of his own personality cast strongly upon them. 
In the case of Paul and the other apostles, many of their 
finest utterances were no doubt directly inspired by Christ, and 
to this was due the extraordinary effect that they produced. 


PROPHETS AND SEERS. 


23 


The readiness of men open to these impressions to attribute 
them all to the one Divine Source, receives striking illustra¬ 
tion from the dispute which took place between the prophets 
Hananiah and Jeremiah, in the 28th chapter of Jeremiah, in 
which they both prophesy “ in the name of the Lord ”; and 
Jeremiah charges Hananiah with prophesying falsely, predict¬ 
ing his death the same year as a punishment. 1 One denuncia¬ 
tion of prophets who prophesied falsely is so remarkable 2 that 
I will quote it: “ And the word of the Lord came unto me, 
4 saying, Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel 
4 that prophesy, and say thou unto them that prophesy out of 
‘ their own hearts, Hear ye the word of the Lord; thus saith 

* the Lord God; Woe unto the foolish prophets, that follow 

* their own spirit, and have seen nothing! 0 Israel, thy pro- 

4 phets are like the foxes in the deserts. Ye have not gone up 
‘ into the gaps, neither made up the hedge for the house of 
‘ Israel to stand in the battle in the day of the Lord. They 
‘ have seen vanity and lying divination, saying, The Lord saith 
‘ it; albeit I have not spoken. Therefore thus saith the Lord 

* God; Because ye have spoken vanity, and seen lies, therefore, 
‘ behold, I am against you, saith the Lord God.” 

One of the remarkable features of inspirational writings or 
utterances of this description is the absolute certainty of the 
medium that the divine authority of his message is indis¬ 
putable. 

In the case of the prophets of Israel, it is evident that 
the poor Jews must often have been in a serious dilemma 
to know which to believe between those who claimed to be 
the spokesmen of God, and, as such, denounced the others 
as liars; and this is rendered still more complicated by the 
fact that in some instances the Deity Himself is said to have 
lied through them—as in the scene witnessed by Micaiah, in 
the 22d chapter of 1st Kings, when the prophet says: “ I saw 
‘ the Lord sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven 
4 standing by Him on His right hand and on His left. And 
«the Lord said, Who shall persuade Ahab, that he may go up 
‘ and fall at Bamoth-Gilead ? And one said on this manner, 
« and another said on that manner. And there came forth a 

* spirit, and stood before the Lord, and said, I will persuade 

i Jeremiah xxviii. 2 Ezekiel xiii. 


24 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


* him. And the Lord said unto him, Wherewith ? And he 

* said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth 

* of all his prophets. And He said, Thou shalt persuade him, 

< and prevail also: go forth, and do so. Now therefore, be- 

* hold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all 

* these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil concern- 

< ing thee.” 

That Micaiali should in a trance, or even in a state of 
hypnotic consciousness, have had represented to him, by the 
spirits who had attached themselves to his organism, a scene 
such as the one above described, is perfectly possible,—that 
he should honestly believe that he had seen a vision of the 
Almighty sitting on His throne, discussing with attendant 
angels how He should lure to his destruction a king with 
whom He was displeased, and attain this object by command¬ 
ing a spirit to infest and lie through His prophets, is an evi¬ 
dence of a very debased mediumistic condition. Such a rep¬ 
resentation of God’s methods of dealing with man, could only 
have been conveyed to the consciousness of one whose own 
moral and intellectual condition was of a very low order, and 
by spirits who were themselves of a low order. It is a re¬ 
markable fact that the mass of professing Christians, even of 
the present day, will believe in the truth of this monstrous 
picture of the prophet’s subsurface consciousness—which re¬ 
flected the images appropriate to it, as projected through the 
agency of spirits also appropriate to it—and will believe, fur¬ 
ther, in the psychical invasion of the prophets of Ahab by 
spirits under superior direction, who ridicule the idea that 
direct action by similar spirits, not only upon the subsurface 
consciousness, but upon the external minds of men, is as 
possible now as it was three thousand years ago; for the 
laws which govern our relations with the unseen world are as 
immutable as the laws which operate in this one, and noth¬ 
ing can be more trivial or shallow than the contention that 
what is possible at one period of the world’s history is impos¬ 
sible at another. 

The presentation of the Deity by the Jewish prophets, is 
really constructed by spirits out of the prevailing human con¬ 
ception of Him at the time, and is utterly irreconcilable with 
the instincts of a more enlightened age. It has ever been the 


SYMBOLISM. 


25 


tendency of men in their different religions to reverse the 
•situation, and create God after their own image. At the same 
time, their prophetic presentations are not to be cast aside as 
worthless, because in their literal and external meaning they 
are often revolting. Behind them there is generally an in¬ 
ternal sense, which, owing to the crude and untutored moral 
-condition of those through whom such communications came, 
and of those to whom they were addressed, it was not pos¬ 
sible to convey in terms which the transmitter or receiver 
-either could understand or appreciate. Hence the deepest 
religious truths have had to be conveyed through symbols 
and images, and this has given rise to mysticism, and to the 
existence of a class of men who were supposed to understand, 
and who doubtless often in some measure did understand, 
their inner meaning, and who were called “ Initiates.” 

It is evident that as the rational faculties are developed 
and brought to bear upon impressions projected upon the 
subsurface consciousness in the manner above described, the 
question must always arise in the mind of their recipient, 
if he is thoroughly honest, as to their origin and trustworthi¬ 
ness ; and in the degree in which his moral nature is purified 
and elevated, and his humility prominent, will he shrink 
from daring to assert that he can recognise them as the direct 
verbal utterances of the Great Almighty. Certainly others 
should shrink from asserting,, as many do assert, not merely 
that these prophets and apostles speak with the divine voice, 
but that it has been personally revealed to them that they 
•did so; for it must always come to this, either in the first or 
second degree, and that every word written was suggested lit¬ 
erally by God. It is to be remarked that this claim was not 
made by the early Church. Indeed it would scarcely be 
credible that Philemon, for instance, when Paul returned his 
runaway slave Onesimus, with a note asking him to receive 
him back, and told him to make a memorandum of the 
amount of any money he might be indebted to him, put it 
•down to his (Paul’s) account, and get a lodging ready for him, 
should have imagined, as Christians do now, that this epistle 
was dictated by God. 

What is true is, that the canon both of the Jewish and 
Christian Scripture is full of inspirational writing, and the 


26 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


same may be said of the sacred records upon which the other 
great religions of the world are founded; this inspirational 
writing goes back two thousand years before Moses, to the 
mythological literature of that most ancient people the 
Accadians, to the funereal ritual of the Egyptians, to the 
earliest Vedas, to the Buddhist Suttas, and the Zend-Avesta 
of the Persians, and the sacred books of other religions,, 
and is strongly exhibited in the Jewish and early Christ¬ 
ians’ writings, some of which are called apocryphal, but 
which were rejected by those who met to decide by the 
light of their own private judgment, what was and what 
was not divine inspiration, because they conflicted with cer¬ 
tain theological dogmas to which they were attached, and 
which were the cause of a good deal of hard fighting 
both before and since. It has continued from that time to- 
the present, when an unprecedented development of this 
description of literature has taken place. 

There is a sense in which all writing may be considered 
inspirational, and in ordinary parlance is said to indicate 
genius, as in the cases of such poets as Shakespeare, Milton,. 
Goethe, and Dante: but I am alluding here rather to those 
who believed themselves to be channels of divine revelation, 
or at all events of ideas projected from supermundane source, 
sometimes by means of mere impressions, sometimes by words 
which were quite audible to their inner hearing, or by rep¬ 
resentations which were quite visible to their inner sight; 
or by phenomena which they recognised as abnormal, and 
which differed entirely from the effort of ordinary literary 
compositions. Among many such since the early Christian 
epoch may be mentioned Mohammed, Hamz4, Jacob Boehmen, 
St Martin, George Fox, Ann Lee, and Swedenborg; and in 
our own time the works of T. L. Harris, Andrew Jackson 
Davis, Joseph Smith the prophet of the Mormons, Eliphaz 
Levy, the Marquis of St Yves, Madame Blavatsky, the authors 
of ‘The Perfect Way,’ ‘Light on the Path,’ ‘The Mother, 
the Woman clothed with the Sun,’ ‘The Flying Roll/‘The 
Book of Life,’ ‘ Geometrical Psychology/ and sundry theoso- 
phical, spiritualistic, and other publications, which are daily 
becoming more numerous. Besides these, many persons are 
guided largely in their own lives by private writings, which 


INSPIRATIONAL WRITINGS. 


27 


they receive either automatically or under impression, and 
in which they place absolute confidence. It is this fact 
which renders it of such great importance that some method 
of testing the relative values of these productions should 
be arrived at, for already many trusting and earnest souls 
have been led by them into difficult and devious paths, 
in their desire to find some solid standing-ground amid the 
quicksands by which they are surrounded. 


28 


CHAPTER II. 


RECENT EXAMINATION INTO THE NATURE OF THE FORCES LATENT IN 
THE HUMAN ORGANISM — HYPNOTIC EXPERIMENTS IN FRANCE, AND 
THE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH SOCIETY IN ENGLAND, FAMILIARISING 
THE SCIENTIFIC MIND WITH FORCES FORMERLY IGNORED — THEIR 
ORIGIN IN THE UNSEEN UNIVERSE — FORMER CONCEPTION OF MAT¬ 
TER MODIFIED BY RECENT DISCOVERIES — SIR HENRY ROSCOE ON 
ATOMS — INSEPARABILITY OF MATTER AND FORCE — DYNASPHERIC 
FORCE—SCIENTIFIC FACTS VALUABLE, CONCLUSIONS MISLEADING — 
HYPNOTIC EXPERIMENTS WITNESSED BY ME IN PARIS — HYPNOTISM 
RECOGNISED BY THE MEDICAL FACULTY IN FRANCE AS DANGEROUS 
— SPIRITUAL INSIGHT NECESSARY TO DISCOVER THE NATURE AND 
ORIGIN OF THESE FORCES, AND TO QUALIFY THE OPERATOR TO 
DEAL WITH THEM. 

Within the last few years an increasing amount of attention 
has been directed to an examination of those forces connected 
with the human organism, which for more than half a cen¬ 
tury have been vaguely known under the name of magnetic, 
whose existence even under this general term science has 
been reluctant to recognise; or, if unable altogether to deny 
the fact that such forces did exist, it has shrunk from 
investigating them, lest it should be seduced away from 
the ground which it terms positive, but which might per¬ 
haps be more appropriately styled negative. As, however, 
these forces gained power under the new conditions which 
are invading the race, they forced themselves upon the 
notice of the world in general with such persistence, that 
it was no longer possible for them to be excluded from the 
range of scientific research, and as an evidence of this we 
have experiments of the leading medical practitioners in 
France, recording the result of their observations, in a monthly 


PHENOMENA OF HYPNOTISM. 


29 


periodical started for the purpose; 1 and of the two schools 
devoted to this subject, one, directed by Dr Charcot in Paris, 
and the other by Professor Bernheim at Nancy; while in 
London the Psychical Research Society has sprung into ex¬ 
istence, which, though hesitating and timid in its conclusions 
so far, refusing to recognise these forces as conditioned by the 
unseen, is still too daring for the stolid and conservative in¬ 
stinct of British science in general. The result has been that 
both in France and England these investigations have led to 
wide divergences of opinion as to the mode of operation 
of these forces: in France, between the schools of Paris and 
Nancy; and in England, between the Psychical Research 
Society and the body of members who dissent from its con¬ 
clusions. Nevertheless the phenomena which have resulted 
from all this inquiry and experiment have been of the utmost 
importance, as familiarising the scientific mind with the ex¬ 
istence of forces which were formerly ignored, of compelling 
it to try and account for their modes of operation, and of 
becoming speedily aware in the attempt, of the exceeding 
shallowness of its own acquirements, and of its incapacity to 
deal systematically with vital energies, which are as capricious, 
as they are inexplicable in their manifestations. As illustra¬ 
tions of organic human potency, however, they have proved 
invaluable. It is no longer possible to deny the fact of what 
is termed telepathy, or to refuse to admit that, when certain 
conditions have been established between two organisms, one 
can be made subject to the other in thought and act, not¬ 
withstanding the most powerful effort on the part of the 
subjected organism to resist the subtle influence projected 
upon it by the other. The patient is compelled to perform 
every act and to say every word that may have been either 
silently or orally suggested—in other words, becomes com¬ 
pletely controlled by the operator. This is an instance of 
human psychical inspiration. The reason why there is no 
regularity in the manifestations, and why the form they will 
take can never be predicated—except where the conditions 
have long been established between the same two organisms 

1 Revue de l’Hypnotisme: experimental et therapeutique. Psychologie. 
Medecine Legale. Maladea Mentales et Nerveuses. Redacteur en chef Docteur 
Edgar Berillon. 


30 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


—is because no two organisms are exactly alike, and there¬ 
fore the vital energies which animate them, and are con¬ 
ditioned by them, must always differ; and as those vital 
energies do not originate in the organism, which is merely a 
transmitting medium through which they operate in nature, 
the original projecting influence is not the human operator 
acting from his own initiative, but acting in unconscious 
relations with an unseen operator. 

To those who are sceptics, chiefly through their ignorance 
of these matters, I may point the analogy of the past, when 
electric forces, now even with their laws laid down with hard 
and fast lines, were fields of untrodden research, captivating 
to a few, the scorn of many, and a danger for all. 

It may be said that it is begging the question to say that 
these forces originate outside of ourselves, or, in other words, 
that we are not our own source of life, and that outside of 
us there is an unseen world. There is no way of proving 
that this is so to those who reject, and in many instances 
reasonably reject, the ordinary phenomena of spiritualism, 
unless such persons are prepared to train the will and subject 
the whole nature, physical, moral, and intellectual, to the 
severe and painful discipline by which their subsurface con¬ 
sciousness may be opened, and their interior faculties de¬ 
veloped. But those—and they are the majority—who have 
no difficulty in assenting to the proposition that the life- 
principle which sustains and animates the visible world, is 
derived from a source outside of it, which we call God, and 
that this life-principle animates other worlds beside ours, 
both visible and invisible, will have no difficulty in further 
perceiving the possibility which has been assumed in the 
most ancient religions of the world, and is a fundamental 
doctrine of Christianity. This invisible world, whether it be 
called heaven and hell, or goes by some other name, is 
peopled with intelligences, hosts of whom have formerly in¬ 
habited this one, and whose influence may still be felt here. 
This is a fact of my own personal experience, as palpable to 
me as my own existence and that of the human beings by 
whom I am surrounded in the flesh, and it is confirmed by 
thousands of others; still, by the majority it is as yet only 
believed in theoretically, if believed in at all. 





THE UNSEEN WORLD. 


31 


But a belief in it is absolutely essential to the belief that 
inspiration of any kind is possible, unless we hold that there 
is only one kind of inspiration—that which comes from God 
■direct—and then we are in the dilemma of having to account 
for the fact that those who claim to speak in His name often 
denounce each other as not speaking really in it—of having 
to accept as the divine voice that which falls so very far be¬ 
low our ideal of what the divine voice should be, and of hav¬ 
ing to find a source for the inspiration of false prophets. 

But if, on the other hand, we accept the ordinary religious 
assumption, founded doubtless on more than mere theory, 
that we are in contact with invisible beings, whose existence 
is recognised in the Christian Scriptures, where they are 
called sometimes “ministering spirits/’ sometimes “angels,” 
and sometimes “ devils,” we need have no difficulty in admit¬ 
ting the possibility, according to the Bible the certainty, of 
■our being influenced by them for good or for evil, as easily 
as by the people by whom we are surrounded; and this will 
be still further simplified when we come to consider what 
the substance we call matter really is, and what spirit is, and 
how they are allied with those forces which are put into 
operation through suggestion. Here modern scientific re¬ 
search is beginning, in spite of itself, to cut adrift from its 
old moorings, and to come to our aid, for it has arrived at the 
•conclusion that “impenetrability” in a sense formerly em¬ 
ployed, cannot now be properly applied to any form or con¬ 
dition of matter with which we are familiar; all bodies being 
made up of molecules separated from each other by distances 
greater than their supposed dimensions,—a mass of iron, for 
instance, is not the solid impenetrable thing it was thought 
to be, but an aggregation of particles that are not in contact, 
but are free to move, and that are in unceasing motion. 
What would have happened to an unscientific man who 
should have ventured to state this years ago ? 

Professor Clerk thus enunciates his conception of the state 
of motion in which are the molecules of the most solid matter: 
“ Visible bodies, apparently at rest, are made of parts, each of 
* which is moving with the velocity of a cannon-ball, and yet 
« never departing to. a visible extent from its mean place.” 1 

1 Can Matter Think ? a Problem in Psychics. Biogen Series. 


32 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


In a recent paper on atoms, molecules, and ether waves,. 
Professor Tyndall makes the following statement: “When 
‘ water is converted into steam, the distances between the* 
‘ molecules are greatly augmented, but the molecules them- 
‘ selves continue intact. We must not, however, picture the- 
‘ constituent atoms of any molecules as held so rigidly as ta 
‘ render intestine motion impossible. The interlocked atoms 

* have still liberty of vibration. The constituent atoms of 

* molecules can vibrate to and fro millions of millions of 
4 times in a second. The atoms of different molecules are 
‘ held together with varying degrees of tightness, they are 
‘ tuned as it were to notes of a different pitch. The vibra- 
‘ tions of the constituent atoms of a molecule may under cer- 
‘ tain circumstances become so intense as to shake the mole- 
‘ cules asunder; most molecules, probably all, are wrecked 
‘ by internal heat, or, in other words, by intense vibratory 
‘ motions.” 

Electricity, for instance, will tear these molecules to pieces. 
This is not the case, however, with atoms, which science so 
far asserts to be indestructible. Upon them electricity has 
no effect; and Sir Henry Roscoe tells us that “ a hydrogen 
‘ atom can endure unscathed the inconceivably fierce tempera- 
‘ ture of stars presumably many times more fervent than our 
‘ sun—as Sirius and Vega.” Indeed the address of the presi¬ 
dent of the British Association at Manchester is full of most 
interesting facts, as bearing upon the atomic theory, at which 
I have arrived from a very different source than from any 
investigation into the researches of Dalton, Prout, Huggins,, 
and others, but which those researches seem in a most re¬ 
markable manner to confirm. We are told that, “in the 
‘ mind of the early Greek, the action of the atom as one sub- 
‘ stance, taking various forms by unlimited combinations, was- 
‘ sufficient to account for all the phenomena of the world.” 
And this is true when we divest our minds of all idea of 
space, which only exists relatively to our senses, and which 
it is impossible to imagine limited. Our present experience 
has already got to the vanishing-point of size in so far as 
these atoms are concerned; 1 and I am quite ready to admit 

1 Professor Roscoe goes on to say that “ modern research has accomplished 
‘ as regards the size of the atom, at any rate to a certain extent, what Dalton, 


THE ATOMIC THEORY. 


33 


that “ it does seem miraculous that chemists should now be 
‘ able to ascertain with certainty the relative position of atoms 
‘ so minute that millions upon millions can stand upon a 

* needle’s point; ” and, what is still more wonderful, that 
they should have discovered that each element possesses 
distinct capabilities of combination—some a single capacity, 
some a double, some a triple, and others again a fourfold 
capacity for combination. 

The importance of this fact will appear in the remarks 
I am about to make, and we are further told that “the 
‘ number of carbon compounds far exceeds that of all other 

* elements put together, for these combinations not only pos- 
‘ sess four means of grasping other atoms, but these four-handed 
‘ carbon atoms have a strong partiality for each other’s com- 

* pany, and readily attach themselves hand in hand to form 
‘ open chains or closed rings, to which the atoms of other ele- 
‘ ments join, to grasp the unoccupied carbon hand, and thus to 
4 yield a dancing company in which all hands are locked to- 

* gether. Such a group, each individual occupying a given 
‘ position with reference to the others, constitutes the organic 

* molecule. When in such a company the individual members 
4 change hands, a new combination is formed.” It must be 
remembered that, small though these atoms be, nature may 
contain others as small again, for all science can know to 


* regarded as impossible. Thus, in 1865, Loschmidt, of Vienna, by a train of 
‘ reasoning which I cannot now stop to explain, came to the conclusion that the 

* diameter of an atom of oxygen or nitrogen was 1-10,000,000th of a centimetre. 
‘ With the highest known magnifying power we can distinguish the 1-40,000th 

* part of a centimetre; if now we imagine a cubic box, each of whose sides has 
‘ the above length, such a box when filled with air will contain from 60 to 100 
‘ millions of atoms of oxygen and nitrogen. A few years later William Thom- 
‘ son extended the methods of atomic measurement, and came to the conclusion 
‘ that the distance between the centres of contiguous molecules is less than 

* 1-5,000,000th and greater than 1-1,000,000,000th of a centimetre; or, to put 
‘ it in language more suited to the ordinary mind, Thomson asks us to imagine 

* a drop of water magnified up to the size of the earth, and then tells us that 
‘ the coarseness of the graining of such a mass would be something between a 

* heap of small shot and a heap of cricket-balls. Or, again, to take Clifford’s 
‘ illustration, you know that our best microscopes magnify from 6000 to 8000 

* times; a microscope which would magnify that result as much again would 

* show the molecular structure of water. Or again, to put it in another form, 

‘ if we suppose that the minutest organism we can now see were provided with 

* equally powerful microscopes, these beings would be able to see the atoms.” 

C 


34 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


the contrary; and that, in fact, when once the principle is 
conceded of the important biological factqr which these atoms 
represent, there is no limit to the solutions which they may 
offer of phenomena which are now repudiated as impossible, 
or are a cause of perplexity to those who credit them. We 
learn from the distinguished authority I have already quoted, 
“ that the phenomena of vegetation, no less than those of the 

* animal world, have during the lost fifty years been placed by 

* the chemist on an entirely new basis.” Yet science was as 
full of prejudices then as it is now. It is safe to predict that 
before another fifty years have passed, another basis will be 
found, for no basis is sound which does not take into account 
the forces which are active in what is called the unorganised 
world; and to do this involves the passage of a chasm, which 
all but a few enthusiastic materialists of the grosser sort pro¬ 
nounce to be impassable. Sir H. Eoscoe says : “ It is true 
‘ there are those who profess to foresee that the day will arrive 
4 when the chemist, by a series of constructive efforts, may 
‘ pass beyond albumen, and gather the elements of lifeless 
‘ matter into a living structure. Whatever may be said re- 

* garding this from other standpoints, the chemist can only 
4 say that at present no such problem lies within his province. 
4 Protoplasm, with which the simplest manifestations of life 
4 are associated, is not a compound, but a structure built up 

* of compounds. The chemist may successfully synthetise any 
4 of its component molecules, but he has no more reason to 
4 look forward to the synthetic production of the structure 
4 than to imagine that the synthesis of gallic acid leads to the 
4 production of gall-nuts.” 

The advance of science during the last fifty years has at 
all events proved to us that our previous conception of 
matter was entirely erroneous, and must undergo a com¬ 
plete change; and that the further it attempts to follow up 
matter into the new region thus opened, the greater the diffi¬ 
culty becomes. Professor Helmholz tells us 44 that the elec- 
4 tricity which permeates all matter, and is like an envelope 
4 to all its atoms, is itself apparently composed of atoms, only 
4 infinitely finer than any others; ” and Professor Maxwell 
talks of particles of electricity, and says that an electric 
current consists 44 of files of particles,”—one theory being 


THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE. 


35 


that the passage of a current of electricity is a vibration or 
revolution of particles, each particle being a group of particles 
revolving upon themselves. 

There are many elements in nature which are called 
imponderable, simply because at present hydrogen is the 
lightest thing we can weigh—in other words, they are not 
really imponderable, but only imponderable as far as we 
have got. This is admitted, and is illustrated by Mr Crookes 
in what he calls “the fourth state of matter,” a form and 
condition vastly more rarefied than the lightest substance 
known—so we pass from the solids, which were formerly 
called matter, to liquids, from liquids to gases, from gases 
to electricity and magnetism, from these to aeriform or radi¬ 
ant matter; for we learn from Ganot’s * Elements of Physics' 
that “ that subtle, imponderable, and eminently elastic fluid 

* called the ether, distributed through the entire universe, per- 
< vading the mass of all bodies, the densest and most opaque 

* as well as the lightest and most transparent, is composed of 

* atoms, and not merely do the atoms of bodies communicate 

* motion to the atoms of the ether, but the latter can impart 

* it to the former. Thus the atoms of bodies are at once the 
‘ sources and the recipients of motion. All physical pheno- 

* mena referred thus to a single cause are but transformations 

* of motion. . . . 

“ In the present state of science we cannot say whether the 

* forces in nature are properties inherent in matter, or whether 

* they result from movements impressed on the mass of subtle 

* and imponderable forms of matter through the universe. 

* The latter hypothesis is, however, generally admitted.” 

This and many other like points can never be settled until 
we realise that our external senses are not tests upon which 
we can rely for anything—being mere organs for the trans¬ 
mission of sensations, which are conditioned not upon what 
things really are, but upon what they appear to us to be. 

Science, to be true , must not be human but divine, and 
those who would search into the secrets of nature, must 
begin by searching into the mysteries of God, from whom it 
emanated. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His 
righteousness, and all other things shall be added to you; ” 
and this kingdom, we are told, is “within us.” Men have 


36 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


begun at the wrong end to work up to the Unknowable 
through the external manifestations of its power, by the aid 
X)f their own limited faculties of reason and observation, 
while they have failed to enlist in the quest the most power¬ 
ful faculty of all, an instinct directed by love for God and 
humanity. 

I do not mean to imply that scientific men are surpassed 
by any other men in the pureness and nobleness of their aims 
and aspirations, but that few of them have perceived that 
there is no such thing as physical science apart from religion, 
and that external nature should be read as a sacred record 
of divine mysteries of which they would become the high 
priests. It would be necessary to assume the hypothesis of 
an intelligent Author in thus seeking to turn the pages of 
His book of nature, but scientists made a greater demand 
upon their imagination than that in their latest assumption 
as to the origin of man: it now behoves them to develop 
within themselves the faculty of understanding these pages 
of nature, by submitting to the ordeals of absolute self- 
sacrifice and personal discipline of the affections, which 
shall leave that love paramount which furnishes the key to 
all knowledge. It is this mistaken attitude of the scientific 
mind in general, which makes it necessarily blind to the per¬ 
ception of the highest truths, whether moral or physical. A 
highly eminent member of the scientific fraternity sounds no> 
uncertain note on the subject. “ Anatomically,” he says, “we 
‘ find no provision in the nervous system for the improvement 
‘ of the moral, save indirectly—through the intellectual— 

* the whole aim of development being for the sake of intel- 
‘ ligence. Historically, in the same manner, we find that the 
‘ intellectual has always led the way in social advancement, 
‘ the moral having been subordinate thereto. The former 
‘ has been the mainspring of the movement, the latter pas- 
‘ sively affected. It is a mistake to make the progress of 

* society depend on that which is itself controlled by a 
‘ higher power.” 1 

Is there no provision in the nervous system for the senti¬ 
ment of love, except indirectly through the intellect ? When, 
with its passionate longing, it sweeps through the human 
1 Draper’s Intellectual Development of Europe, vol. ii. p. 360. 


CHRISTIAN CIVILISATION. 


37 


organism, does it not carry away any feeble barriers that the 
intellect may have erected to stay its course ?—unless, 
indeed, some still stronger moral impulse restrains it, and 
then it is not intellect, but conscience, or the operation of a 
higher love. In point of fact, whatever it may be anatomi¬ 
cally, intellect is the sport of the passions, their slave and 
obedient servant, to carry out their behests; but as it is 
impossible to anatomise either the emotions or the intellect, 
or to push research beyond the cerebrum, any attempt to 
formulate their relations to each other by an analysis of the 
nervous system of man, must inevitably at present lead to 
confusion and error. The best proof that this is so, is to 
be found in what Professor Draper calls the “ social advance¬ 
ment” at which we have arrived. If inventions by which 
wars can be conducted on a scale of more wholesale slaughter 
than history records, and explosions can be effected which 
will cause greater destruction in a moment than could for¬ 
merly be accomplished in a week; if frauds can be perpetrated 
by which more money can be legally acquired by a financial 
operation in a day, and more innocent victims ruined than 
was formerly possible in a lifetime; if science, to use his 
own words, has given rogues such discoveries as “ would 

* suggest to the evil-disposed the forging of bank-notes, the 
4 sophisticating of jewellery, and be invaluable in the utter- 

* ing of false coinage; ” if more squalor, poverty, misery, and 
seething vice is now collected on a given area than we have 
ever heard of in ancient times; if the grinding of labour 
by capital has so exasperated the working classes that the 
social fabric of what is called “ Christian civilisation ” is 
threatened from its basis; if the unparalleled ingenuity in 
crime, extravagance in luxury, and the deliberate repudiation 
in daily practice of the moral teaching of Christ, are an evi¬ 
dence of “ social advancement ” and of intellectual supremacy, 
—and if these are the conclusions to which a study of the 
anatomy of the human frame leads its students, then the 
sooner the science of physiology is swept off the face of 
the earth the better, and the cerebrum abandoned as fur¬ 
nishing the highest source of human inspiration. 

But, indeed, it is not the fault of physiology that its pro¬ 
fessors go so wide of the mark, but of the prejudices and 


38 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


preconceptions with which they approach it. If scientific 
men would only confine themselves to recording facts, their 
researches would be in the highest degree valuable—as in¬ 
deed they are—in the cause of divine truth. It is when 
they come to forming hypotheses, and arriving at conclusions, 
that they so terribly mislead those who are unable to dis¬ 
criminate between those facts, and the fallacies of their de¬ 
ductions from them, and they thus work irreparable injury to 
the cause they most wish to serve. 

Modern science, then, having reached the vanishing-point 
of matter, and there stuck hopelessly befogged, and unable to 
decide whether it generates force, in which case it might be 
called ponderable force—or is only acted on by force, in which 
case the force that acts upon it must also be material, or it 
would have no transmitting medium ; and having also decided 
that matter can never touch matter, every atom being pre¬ 
vented from doing so by its own “ dynasphere ” (nobody knows 
what a dynasphere is made of) ; and being further satisfied 
that “ the atomic abyss is as unfathomable as the interstellar 
space is immeasurable,”—leaves us there to scramble out of 
it as best we may. But it has carried us along far enough 
for our purposes, for it has given us a new conception of 
matter, and one which, if we could divest our minds com¬ 
pletely of the definition which we received of it from science 
before it knew better, we might still use. This, however, is 
scarcely possible, and would be too misleading. Though it 
is scientifically admitted that matter is in gases and ether, 
in light and heat, as well as in solids and liquids, and that 
it pervades all known forces—electric, magnetic, galvanic, 
odylic, or by whatever name they may be called—and that, in 
fact, nothing has yet been discovered of which we can assert 
that no matter is there, not even the interstellar spaces, or the 
atomic dynaspheres themselves, it is evident we can conceive 
of no limit to it, either in time or space, for it is indestruc¬ 
tible as well as illimitable. In other words, it is infinite and 
eternal; and as we cannot conceive of the Deity being out¬ 
side of what is infinite and eternal, He also must be in this- 
sense material—an idea which seems to crop out, though 
perhaps not consciously to himself, in Mr Norman Lockyer’s 
suggestion that the varied forms of matter, simple and com^ 


MATTER IN MOTION. 


39 


plex, are but presentations of diversified properties, of tem¬ 
porary conditions of that which is essentially one and the 
same for ever. Another scientific writer remarks that “ the 
‘ physical thing which energises and does work in and upon 

* ordinary matter, is a separate form of matter infinitely refined 
4 and infinitely rapid in its vibrations, and thus able to pene- 

* trate through all ordinary matter, and to make everywhere a 
‘ fountain of motion, no less real because unseen. It is among 
‘ the atoms of the crystal and the molecules of living matter; 

* and whether producing locked effects or free, it is the same 
4 cosmic thing, matter in motion, which we conceive as mate- 
‘ rial energy, and with difficulty think of as only a peculiar 
4 form of matter in motion.” 

The physical thing which is here described as a separate 
form of matter, and as being “able to penetrate through 
all ordinary matter, and to make everywhere a fountain of 
motion, no less real because unseen,” is nothing more nor less 
than what we have been in the habit of calling spirit, when 
we wished to separate it from what is termed above “ ordinary 
matter ”: mind is also composed of this extraordinary matter, 
so is will, so is every emotion; but in order to avoid confu¬ 
sion, it would be well to find a specific designation for it. 
Jacob Boehmen calls it “ heavenly substantiality,” and Sweden¬ 
borg “ natural and spiritual atmospheres composed of discrete 
substances of a very minute form.” 

Mr Crookes has invented the word protyle, which may pos¬ 
sibly convey the desired idea; and Professor Coues calls it soul- 
stuff or biogen; while occultists call it astral fluid. The most 
remarkable illustration of the stupendous energy of atomic 
vibratory force is to be found in that singular apparatus in 
Philadelphia, which for the last fifteen years has excited in 
turn the amazement, the scepticism, the admiration, and the 
ridicule of those who have examined it — called “Keely’s 
Motor.” Already more than £50,000 have been expended 
upon it, and so far it has not been possible to render it com¬ 
mercially available. Hence, in the practical land of its ori¬ 
gin, it has popularly been esteemed a fraud. I have not 
examined it personally, but I believe it to be based upon 
a sound principle of dynamics, and to be probably the 
first of a series of discoveries destined to revolutionise all 


4*0 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


existing mechanical theories, and many of the principles 
upon which they are founded. Mr Keely has discov¬ 
ered that such a change can be effected by vibration, in the 
atoms of which the atmosphere is composed, that what he 
terms “ atmospheric disintegration ” can be produced, which 
has the effect of liberating a subtle essence, the nature of 
which has still to be determined, and which he believes to be 
“inter-atomic.” The energy it possesses is so great that it 
exercises a pressure of 25,000 lb. to the square inch, and in 
the engine which he has just constructed for traction purposes, 
develops a force of 250 horse-powen All this is achieved 
without the introduction of any extraneous motive power, the 
whole apparatus being so constructed that the liberation of 
this tremendous agency from its atmospheric prison-house 
can be effected by the vibrations produced by a tuning-fork. 1 
Those who are sufficiently unprejudiced to connect the bear¬ 
ings of this discovery, of what must be dynaspheric force, 
with phenomena which have hitherto been regarded as super¬ 
natural by the ignorant, will perceive how rapidly we are 
bridging over the chasm which has always divided the seen 
from the unseen, and obliterating the distinction between 
what has erroneously been called matter, and what has no 
less erroneously been called spirit. 

From this we may infer that the dynaspheres of the atoms 
cognisable by science themselves contain atoms, which are in 
their turn surrounded by dynaspheres, and so on ad infinitum , 
and that this dynaspheric force is the agent of those phe¬ 
nomena of hypnotism, spiritualism, telepathy, and occultism 
generally, which are now puzzling the more advanced students 
of philosophy, and inquirers of the type of the Psychical Re¬ 
search Society. This force it is which, passing through the 
organism of the operator into the hypnotised patient, controls 
his will, and inspires his words and acts; and in order to do 
this, it has to penetrate the atoms of the ordinary matter 
which compose the fleshly particles of the visible frames of 
both. It can now easily be understood how, when another 
class of operators intervene, who have “ shuffled off this mor¬ 
tal coil,” but who none the less live in the so-called spiritual 

1 See the British Mercantile Gazette, 15th February 1887, and the Scientific 
Arena, Dr Wilford Hall.—E d. 


DYNASPHERIC FORCE. 


41 


bodies composed of this supersensuous material force, which 
are still invisible to the great majority of people, though by 
no means so to all, their influence can be more powerfully 
-exercised than if they still remained in the flesh; for the 
finer atoms of which they are composed, are not encrusted 
with those coarser particles which we see, and with which the 
finer particles are interlocked. It is the relationship which 
these two varieties of atoms bear to each other, which regu¬ 
lates and controls all organic phenomena, and which suggests 
the cause of effects that have been heretofore considered 
unaccountable. Here we have the secret of that magnetic 
attraction and repulsion which we call love or hate, sympathy 
or antipathy, and of all the varieties of sentiment which we 
produce upon our neighbours and they upon us. We express 
this truth unconsciously when we say of a man that he 
makes “ a certain impression ” upon us, the impression being 
literally produced by the impact of one variety of atoms upon 
another variety. So, in the emotions of anger, joy, sorrow, 
&c., the varieties and movements of atoms are as infinite 
which compose these emotions, as those are which go to com¬ 
pose our ideas, and which Mr Herbert Spencer defines as the 
result of “ the liberation of certain forces produced by chem¬ 
ical action in the brain. As he admits that these forces have 
their origin in the unknowable, and are not generated in the 
brain itself, and as these cannot exist without atoms as a 
transmitting medium, he is not so far from the solution of 
the mystery of the metamorphosis which takes place between 
the forces which he calls physical, and those which he calls 
mental, as he himself supposes. 

“How this metamorphosis takes place,” he says, “how a 

* force existing as motion, heat, or light can become a mode 
4 of consciousness; how it is possible for aerial vibrations to 

* generate the sensations we call sound, or for the forces liber- 
4 ated by chemical changes in the brain to give rise to emotions, 
4 —these are mysteries which it is impossible to fathom.” But 
when once we perceive that the aerial vibrations consist of 
movements of atoms which make the tune in the case of 
music, and the words in the case of speech, and that they 
in turn receive their impact from other atoms behind them 
which suggest the tune or the thought, which again receive 


42 


SCIENTIFIC KELIGION. 


theirs in like manner, and so on up the scale of the universal 
consciousness to the source of all consciousness; and that 
by their impact on the atoms of what we term “ordinary 
matter,” they affect these atoms in our nerve-centres, and so 
convey sensation, emotion, and thought to the brain, there 
is bottom found to the unfathomable, so far as this partic¬ 
ular mystery is concerned: we no longer make chemical 
changes in our brains responsible for the ideas which they 
give forth, but we open the avenues to inspiration, which 
would otherwise be closed to it, and in opening these avenues 
afford ourselves the possibility and the hope of fathoming 
other mysteries besides this one. 

When once we have clearly grasped the idea that physical, 
mental, and emotional forces are all material, and that their 
varied manifestations are conditioned by the varieties of 
which they consist, and of endless combinations and permu¬ 
tations which may be produced by those atoms, resulting in 
effects as infinitely varying, and all correlated to each other, 
and possessing conserved energies of undreamt-of potency, 
science will have a field before it in which discoveries tran¬ 
scending human imagination lie buried ; but the spots in 
which they are concealed are holy ground, upon which no 
profane foot dare tread—mysteries which the ancients pro¬ 
tected from profanation by their mysticism, and to which 
the moderns have blinded themselves by their scepticism. 
Though from what has been said we may vaguely perceive 
where these treasures of divine knowledge lie hid, no man 
can furnish another with a sure key to them. That is to 
be found by each who would learn the secrets of wisdom, 
only in his own heart; and it is by an effort of his affections, 
and not by one of his brain, that he can fit this key to the 
lock of knowledge. So long as he stands perched on the in¬ 
tellectual pedestal upon which it is his ambition to tower, 
the admired of all beholders, so long will he search in vain 
for that hidden treasure which his soul longs after, and 
continue to cast reflections upon the intelligence of his pre¬ 
decessors, if not upon his own, by exhibiting to the world 
the shallowness of many of those scientific conclusions upon 
which their greatness at the time was founded. Let him 
then beware of intellectual effort in this direction, unpre- 


DANGERS OF HYPNOTISM. 


43 


pared by the necessary preliminary moral training and dis¬ 
cipline to make it. 

Science is already responsible for having put dynamite, 
roburite, melanite, and other destructive explosives into 
the hands of the vicious and cruel; and its manifold 
inventions have facilitated the perpetration of various 
kinds of crime; while it has already, panic-stricken, begun 
to perceive that the therapeutic advantages which may 
accrue from hypnotism, are more than counterbalanced by 
the fearful dangers which it involves. M. Liegois 1 tell us 
that it would be difficult to find twenty persons among 
the patients of Dr Liebault who could resist a criminal 
assault. Ladame writes 2 : “ Personne ne doute plus au- 
‘ jourd’hui de la possibility pour une femme de subir les 
‘ derniers outrages pendent le sommeil hypnotique; et le 
‘ Docteur Cullerre dans son interessant volume 3 ecrit que 

* c’est Pi une des hypotheses le moins susceptible d’objections 
‘ s^rieuses parmi toutes celles qui pourraient etre presentees.” 
In the ‘ Archives de l’Anthropologie Criminelle, et des 
Sciences Penales’ of March 1886, p. 188, is narrated the case 
of a girl in which the operator produced a blister upon her 
arm, as well as stigmata, by simple hypnotic suggestion • 
and by the same means Professors Beaumis and Bernheim 
retarded or accelerated the circulation of the blood, and the 
pulsations of the heart to suit themselves, the experiment 
being recorded on a sphygmograph, and the evidence remains 
in the traces still existing made by the instrument, the con¬ 
clusion being finally arrived at that, as by an act of will the 
vital functions could be so powerfully acted upon, they might 
by the same act of will be arrested altogether, and death 
would ensue. In the case of a woman with child, abortion 
could be produced by the same means. “ Je ne parle pas,” 
continues Mons. Toureaux, who was a witness, and sometimes 
an actor in these experiments, “ de l’idee du suicide qu’il 

* serait facile d’infliger a quelque individu. I/obsession de 

1 Liegois, professeur & la faculty de droit de Nancy. De la suggestion 
hypnotique dans ces rapports avec le droit criminel et le droit civil. Nancy i 
1885. 

2 L’Hypnotisme et la Medicine Legale. Dr Ladame. 

3 Culture Magnetism. Paris : 1886. 


44 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


* la mort ne cesserait en ce cas qu’avec le dernier instant 

* de la victime. La justice n’a-t-elle done point a se soucier 
< de tous ces mystkres.” A suggestion is, for instance, made 
to a subject, who is a perfectly honest, well-principled girl, 
to steal a jewel at the same hour on the following day, the 
method to avoid suspicion being also pointed out. This she 
•does with great dexterity, following the instructions exactly. 
She first denies the theft, then is made to admit it, and finally 
to write to the judge of the district accusing a third person 
•of the theft by naming him in a letter of her own com¬ 
position, and signed by herself. When she was in her normal 
•condition she was entirely unconscious of the whole episode; 
•though while the patient is in this hypnotic state there is 
nothing usually to indicate to an ordinary observer anything 
•abnormal. Experiments have also been made to discover 
how long hypnotic suggestion retains its influence over a 
patient, and Professor Beaumis has succeeded in having a 
suggestion realised 172 days after he had made it—from the 
14th July 1884 to the first of January 1885. 1 

Instances of all kinds, some of them even more remarkable 
than the above, could be quoted, for new developments are 
•every day occurring, all tending, however, in the same direc¬ 
tion, and all going to show that there is no limit to the danger 
with which society is threatened from this source. 

When I was in Paris in February 1887, I went to the 
•Salpetriere, where some of the most remarkable of Dr Char¬ 
cot’s experiments have been made, and witnessed the stage 
through which they were passing, and the phenomena that 
were being exhibited, and which Dr Charcot classifies under the 
three heads, lethargic, cataleptic, and somnambulic, including 
them all in “Le grand Hypnotisme.” The operator on the 
•occasion of my visit was Dr Babinski, the patient a girl of 
about twenty, partially paralysed on one side. On being 
seated in a chair, and her elbow pressed for a few seconds 
by Dr Babinski, sbe passed at once into the lethargic state, 
and became insensible to all surrounding impressions of sight, 
sound, or touch, but not rigid. In fact she presented some¬ 
what the appearance of a limp corpse, and on a limb being 

1 Beaumis. Le Somnambulisme Provoqu<$: Etudes Psychologiques, p. 233. 
Paris : 1886. 


HYPNOTIC EXPERIMENTS. 


45 


raised it fell immediately. By simply opening her eyes, sh& 
was thrown into a cataleptic state, and her limbs remained 
in any attitude in which they were placed. She continued 
perfectly deaf, and though her eyes were open, they appa¬ 
rently received no visual impression; she was not rigid, but 
on a muscle being touched it stiffened, while a pass immedi¬ 
ately released it. Sensation could be transferred to the para¬ 
lysed side from the other by closing the eye on that side;, 
the side which was formerly sensitive now became perfectly 
insensible to pain, while the slightest prick of a pin could 
instantly be felt on the other. Sensation could thus be trans¬ 
ferred from one side to the other by opening the right or left 
eyes; when both eyes were closed she fell back into the- 
lethargic condition; when both were open, insensibility re¬ 
mained in the paralysed side; on the forehead being briskly 
rubbed for a few seconds, she passed into the somnambulic- 
state. In this condition she could see and hear, and in fact 
seemed thoroughly herself, excepting that she had lost all 
power of will, and was open to suggestion. When told there- 
was a potato on the end of the nose of a gentleman who was- 
present, she was for a moment inclined to deny it, but 
gradually the expression of her face changed, and assumed 
one of mingled horror and amazement, and she finally burst 
into a fit of violent laughter, and admitted that she did see 
a potato there. She was then told that she had a glass of 
champagne in her hand, and ordered to drink it, on which 
she lifted her empty hand to her mouth, and went through 
all the action of swallowing a highly satisfactory liquid. She 
sneezed violently on being told that she was sniffing smelling- 
salts. Closing her eyes threw her instantly into the lethargic 
state, and opening them, into the cataleptic. On electricity 
being applied to the risible muscles, she expanded into a 
sweet smile ; she clenched her fists, and her features were con¬ 
vulsed with rage when it was applied to her frontal muscles ; 
and when it was applied to those on her chin, her lips and 
nostrils curled into an expression of profound contempt. On 
another patient being introduced and thrown into the som¬ 
nambulic state, the two were placed back to back with a 
high screen between them, a large magnet being put on the 
table in close proximity. The actions performed by one were- 


46 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


then exactly reproduced by the other, although they were 
quite invisible to one another. If the muscles of one were 
made rigid by a touch, the muscles of the other became rigid 
sympathetically. If the hands of one were raised, the other 
raised her hands. The action of the magnet and the electric 
battery on the patient was an interesting demonstration of the 
intimate relations which exist between the atoms of electric 
and magnetic forces outside the organism and those in it. 
Dr Babinski informed me that it was difficult to obtain the 
reproduction of each other’s motions by patients in the 
absence of the magnet in close proximity. The effect upon 
me of being present while scientific men are exploring these 
forces in this reckless manner, is very much what it would 
be if I was hunting for something in a powder-magazine with 
a man who did not know there was any powder there, and 
held a naked candle in his hand. That they themselves, 
however, recognise how great is the danger, is proved by the 
efforts that are being made to bring it under the action of 
the law, and render it penal for anybody to grope into these 
mysteries in the dark, except those who are supposed to be 
professionally qualified to do so. In Denmark it has already 
been rendered penal . 1 The result of the dabbling by amateurs 
into these phenomena, and the fashion of making hypnotisa- 
tion an after-dinner amusement, has been to increase the 
annual percentage of patients to the Salpetri&re to a very 
great extent, which I was told at the time, but the amount of 
the percentage has slipped my memory. The defence of those 

1 Since the above was written, an article has appeared in the ‘ Evenement’ 
of the 1st November 1887, upon hyppotic suggestion, narrating an interview 
between Dr Luys and Dr Wulffs, in which it remarks—“ Our free will, our 
‘ honour, our very existence, are menaced ; and it is in the name of society and 
‘ of morality that medical men implore justice to act implacably against those 
* who speculate upon public curiosity, by making use of practices which to-day 
‘ form part of medical study, and the usurpation of which should bring them 
‘ under the arm of the law.” 

But the knowledge of these forces on the part of medical men is very much 
what it was with regard to electricity in its early days. Their ignorance of 
their real nature and proximate source is as great as that of the amateurs 
they denounce. 

For a full account of the experiments and the conclusions so far arrived at 
by the medical profession in France, the reader is referred to a work recently 
published, called ‘ Animal Magnetism,’ by Alfred Binet and Charles Fere: 
Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co. 


KESULTS ACHIEVED. 


47 


who are using it as a therapeutic agent is, that in a certain 
class of diseases it is attended with very beneficial results; 
but we have no means of knowing how much injury it inflicts 
in other ways—how hypnotic suggestion charged with the 
moral or immoral magnetisms of the operator, jnay taint the 
purer magnetisms into which they are projected, and with 
which they commingle, or what subtle interchanges of the 
vital principle take place. Unless an operator be absolutely 
free from any physical or moral taint—and which of us can 
say that he is ?—some of that taint must perforce exist in the 
material atoms which he projects into the organisms of the 
patients, even though he may cure them physically. 

We are experimenting with a factor more powerful and 
dangerous than any explosive, of the nature and properties of 
which we know scarcely anything beyond the fact that with 
it we can destroy not only the physical bodies, but the moral 
natures of those accessible to its influence, by a mere act of 
volition. 

Many instances are cited by the French doctors in which 
they have succeeded in changing the whole characters of 
their patients — some of them have been quoted by Mr 
Frederick Myers in a recent article, 1 — and converted de¬ 
graded, vicious, and uncontrollable criminals into respectable 
members of society. The converse process is equally pos¬ 
sible. Who is fit to be intrusted with such powers ? and 
how can we prevent them from being universally practised ? 
Therefore it is that I say we are on the threshold of a moral 
convulsion, the like of which the world has never seen, which 
it is too late now to attempt to avert, but which may be mit¬ 
igated by the proper application of that science to which it 
will have been so largely due. But its professors must rise 
from being mere empirics to being seers; and this they can 
never do so long as they refuse to recognise the direct action 
upon every human being in the world, of influences eman¬ 
ating from one which is not cognisable to their most super¬ 
ficial and external senses. Once let them assume the hy¬ 
pothesis that a Deity may possibly exist—by no means a 
more strained one than the transmutation of species — and 
that they can arrive at such close internal union with Him, 

1 “ Multiplex Personality ”—‘ Nineteenth Century.’ 


48 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


as to receive interior illumination from Him, and the very 
effort to attain union will lead them into the channel provided 
for its communication, and unfold to them the phenomena of 
a world which no spectroscope can reveal. It is no longer 
a matter of dealing with rocks, or beetles, or gases, but withi 
the whole moral life of men, who are leaving the superficial 
ground upon which they may possibly have done more good 
than harm, but are not permitted to rush in where angels 
fear to tread, without a warning voice being raised of the 
tremendous responsibility that they are incurring, and the 
fearful catastrophe they are precipitating. 

This is no longer a question of what has been called physi¬ 
cal science, but it is a question of moral science of the most 
profound importance; and he who would become a professor 
of moral science—with which physical science is inseparably 
interwoven, the two combined constituting divine science— 
must first reconcile himself with the Divinity, and make 
those experiments upon himself, under divine guidance, which 
are necessary to qualify him to experiment upon others. 


49 


1 


CHAPTER III. 


THE INTERLOCKING OF THE INVISIBLE ATOMS OF THE SEEN AND UN¬ 
SEEN WORLDS FORM A SINGLE SYSTEM OF ANIMATE NATURE — 
GLIMPSES INTO THE INVISIBLE, CONDITIONED ON THE MORAL STATE 
OF THE OBSERVER—DEATH A LIBERATION OF GROSSER ATOMS FROM 
THOSE MORE SUBLIMATED — MATERIAL PARTICLES THE VEHICLES OF 
FORCE CONSTANTLY ASSUMING NEW PHASES— ANIMA MUNDI —INTER¬ 
DEPENDENCE OF ALL CREATED NATURE — PSYCHICAL EXPERIENCE 
ATTENDING THE COMPOSITION OF SYMPNEUMATA—DUPLEX CEREBRAL 
ACTION — VITAL ATOMIC INTERACTION BETWEEN THE LIVING AND 
THE DEAD—METHOD OF CEREBRAL IMPREGNATION — INSPIRATIONS 
WHICH DO NOT GRAPPLE WITH THE EARTH MALADY WORTHLESS— 
CHRIST, A RADIATIVE CENTRE OF HEALING FORCE—THE DISCIPLINE 
OF ABSOLUTE SELF-SACRIFICE ESSENTIAL AS A PREPARATION TO 
THE HIGHEST INSPIRATION — DEFECT IN THE EASTERN SYSTEMS OF 
ASCETICISM. 

Investigations of modern science into the nature and pro¬ 
perties of what has heretofore been termed “ matter,” and the 
experiments which have been made with material physical 
forces upon the human organism, as illustrated by the phe¬ 
nomena of hypnotism, have afforded us a basis upon which to 
argue, that a world may exist composed of material forces 
which are of too subtle a nature for us to cognise with 
our present external senses; and that if that world is 
peopled with material beings appropriate to it, there may 
be such an affinity between the finer atoms of the seen 
'and the unseen worlds, as to render possible the interlock¬ 
ing of their respective atoms, thus forming a single system 
of animate nature—for there is no such thing as inanimate 
nature—of which one part is visible and the other part in¬ 
visible, and of which the visible may be a broken and dis¬ 
torted image of some portion of the other part,—broken and 

D 


50 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


distorted, because the medium of our senses through which 
we can become conscious of it is so limited and imperfect. 
These, however, in the case of certain persons, are still suf¬ 
ficiently developed to enable them to perceive, in a dim and 
obscure way, that the world in which they live is a reflex of 
events which are transpiring in one which is unseen, and of 
the processes of nature there, and of the moral and intel¬ 
lectual activities which prevail in it. At the same time, the 
representation is imperfect and partial in the extreme; while 
in the case of no two observers does the image thus observed 
present the same aspect of character, because the glimpses 
which they catch of it are conditioned by the quality of 
their material atoms, which become the transmitting medium 
for their internal vision. 

He, however, who has penetrated far enough into the mys¬ 
tery of the union of these two worlds into one system, soon 
begins clearly to perceive that it is through the interlocking 
of the atoms of the unseen world with those of our own, and 
of the people on it, that all natural life is maintained. When 
apparent suspension of animation occurs in nature, a certain 
dislocation of these atoms takes place, resulting in entirely 
new combinations of them, by means of which the grosser ones 
are liberated from those which are more sublimated; these 
latter remaining interlocked with those with which they have 
affinity, and being for the time inseparably attached to them, 
contribute the life they have, as it were, withdrawn from this 
world, to the world to which they now belong; from which 
they again discharge it into this one, as water is drawn from 
the seas and the streams of earth into the heavens, where it 
recondenses, and descends with its life-giving moisture again 
to the soil. Thus there is an endless vital circle radiating life, 
none of which is ever wasted, for it is part of an endless 
system of absorption and distribution, deriving its life in 
turn from another system revolving eternally round the 
centre of all life, which at the same time permeates to the 
circumference of all life, till, once more in contact with the 
infinite, human thought fails in its faculties of conception 

We have an exact counterpart of this process in the cycle 
or evolution through which material particles, suitable for 
organisation, incessantly run in the same portion of our uni- 


VITAL CYCLES. 


51 


verse. Science tells us that “at one moment they exist as 

< inorganic combinations in the air or soil, then as portions 
‘ of animals, then they return to the soil, again to renew their 

< cycle of movement. . . . Material particles are thus the 

< vehicles of force. They undergo no destruction. Chemically 

* speaking, they are eternal. And so, likewise, force never 
4 deteriorates nor becomes lessened. It may assume new 
4 phases, but it is always intrinsically unimpaired. The only 
4 changes it can exhibit are those of aspect and distribution: 

* of aspect, as electricity, affinity, light, heat; of distribution, 

4 as when the diffused aggregate of many substances is con- 
■* centrated in one animal form. 

“It is but little that we know respecting the mutations 
4 and distributions of force in the universe. We cannot tell 
4 what becomes of that which has characterised animal life, 

4 though of its perpetuity we may be assured. It has no more 

* been destroyed than the material particles of which such 
4 animals consist. They have been transmuted into new 
4 forms—it has taken on a new aspect. The sum-total of 
4 matter in the world is invariable, so likewise is the sum- 

* total of force.” 1 

Here, then, we have science admitting that it does not 
know what becomes of the forces which have characterised 
.animal life, while it is assured of their perpetuity ; and of 
•course the same must be said of the finer material particles 
which are the transmitting media of that force. The two. 
together form the “ matter in motion,” the sum-total of which 
is invariable, but which, none the less, forms the endless cycle 
by which it re-enters that portion of our universe which is 
invisible to us, recombines there according to the affinity of 
its constituent atoms, and returns charged with new life- 
potency, vitalised first by the divine solar ray, and afterwards 
by the material solar ray, to impart its vigours to the visible 
■creation, in the form of heat, light, electricity, or gaseous com¬ 
pound, appropriate to the functions it is destined to fulfil. 

Hence it follows that we can arrive at no just appreciation 
of the nature we see, without taking into consideration the 
nature we do not see, for the two combined form one indivis¬ 
ible universe. It is on that part which is invisible that we 

1 Draper’s Intellectual Development of Europe, vol. ii. p. 342. 


52 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


depend for existence, for it is by means of the forces pro¬ 
jected thence, on our finest nerve-centres, that we are enabled 
to exercise all the faculties we possess, whether they be moral, 
intellectual, or physical. That this is so, I am aware that I 
have no means of proving to those who have not passed 
through like experiences with myself, but it does not in¬ 
volve a very strained or impossible assumption, and will be 
found to solve many problems hitherto deemed insolvable; 
it is, in fact, the true origin of the idea of the “ world soul,” 
or anima mundi of the ancient philosophers,—and if it is so, 
it follows that there is no such thing as initiative absolutely 
independent of influence on the part of any created thing in 
this world; but inasmuch as the whole of our world, seen 
and unseen, and every living thing upon it, is- pervaded by 
the divine principle, of which the essence is freedom of will, 
this remains indestructible in spite of the influences brought 
to bear upon it from both worlds, and constitutes the sensa¬ 
tion which resides in the faculty of choice. This choice can 
of course be exercised for good or for evil; and in the degree 
in which we set our wills to obey one impulse or the other, 
do we come under the influence of good or of evil men and 
women, both seen and unseen, and are controlled by them. 

As this fact takes form in one’s mind, does one begin to 
perceive its truth by experience, and, in the case of unseen 
personalities, to realise the operation of the interlocked atoms 
which act and react upon one another with a systolic and 
diastolic motion, sometimes apparently in the brain, and 
sometimes in the nerve-centres and solar plexus. I will 
venture to illustrate this by the influence under which I 
am at present writing, and which I am conscious to be that 
of my wife, who is no longer by my side in the flesh; but 
in order to do so it will be necessary to describe first the 
circumstances under which a book edited by me, 1 and which 
appeared not long since, was written. I had been conscious 
for some months in the summer of 1882 that a book was 
taking form within my brain, though I could obtain no clear 
idea of its nature, — and indeed the same experience has 
preceded the pages I am now penning,—when I decided 

1 Sympneumata : or, Evolutionary Forces now Active in Man. William 
Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh : 1885. 


DUPLEX CEREBRAL ACTION. 


53 


one day to attempt a beginning, and trust to the inspiration 
of the hour to carry me on, as I am doing now. I had 
scarcely written the first sentence and begun the second, 
when the ideas which had presented themselves on taking 
up my pen suddenly left me, and my mind became a sheet 
of blank paper. I remarked upon this to my wife, who was 
sitting in the room, and, reading what I had written, asked her 
if she could finish the sentence: this, without a moment’s 
hesitation, she had no difficulty in doing. I now most labori¬ 
ously began another, but soon the same difficulty presented 
itself, which was solved in the same way. I found it hope¬ 
less to try and write another word. I therefore said to my 
wife that it was she evidently who was intended to write the 
book, and begged her to continue to dictate to me. To this 
at first she objected, on the ground of a want of literary 
practice, of material, and of capacity to treat properly so pro¬ 
found a subject; but she finally consented to try, and for a 
couple of hours dictated to me slowly, but without hesitation 
or correction. She then became too exhaused to continue. 
On the following day I suggested that, as I had a good deal 
of literary work to do, she had better write the book herself, 
and I went to write a magazine article in another room. 
After the lapse of a few minutes she came to me saying that 
she had not been able to write a line, or to find an idea in 
her head of any sort, suggesting that I should come back and 
continue to be her amanuensis. I had no sooner taken up 
the pencil than she began to dictate, and continued for some 
moments with apparent ease, when she paused, and finally 
announced that again all her ideas had vanished, and asked 
me if I could suggest a cause. As a few moments previously 
a new idea had struck me with reference to the article I was 
writing on quite another subject, I remembered that perhaps 
it might be owing to my abstraction from the matter in 
hand. , On my again directing my attention to it she con¬ 
tinued without hesitation, and wishing to help her, I endeav¬ 
oured to formulate some ideas. “ Now,” she said, “ you are 

* doing something that confuses me terribly. I have a whole 

* mass of thoughts crowding on my brain, and I cannot feel 
4 which is the right one.” I told her how my mind had been 
working, and suggested that,I should try as much as pos- 


54 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


sible to keep it an absolute blank. This I managed, with 
more or less success, to do, and in the degree in which I 
succeeded, did she dictate with freedom. We also found 
that if I had written anything on any subject previously, or 
been engaged in any matter of business the same day, it was 
useless for her to attempt to dictate. We were obliged to 
begin our writing the first thing in the morning, to allow of 
no interruptions, and to be in no way anxious or preoccupied 
with worldly matters till it was concluded. In this way 
the book was written, but the process was a slow one, owing 
to the many days lost by interruptions, which were unavoid¬ 
able, and her own feeble health during a great part of the 
time. But there was nothing abnormal in her condition 
when dictating—no indication of the state popularly known 
as “ mediumistic.” Her mind was in full and active opera¬ 
tion, and all her intellect, which was a very powerful one, 
was concentrated on the effort of expressing in appropriate 
terms the ideas which were suggested'to her. 

The book speaks for itself as a remarkable effort of com¬ 
position, the only defect of which is the length of some of 
the sentences, which are sometimes too involved; but I found 
that any attempt on my part to correct or modify, immedi¬ 
ately -interrupted the flow of idea. From a psychical point of 
view, this experience is interesting, as illustrating a condition 
of moral and intellectual affinity which was the result of a 
long and arduous effort, extending over many years, and by 
processes to which I may briefly refer later. The effect of 
this internal connection was to mitigate to an inconceivable 
degree the sense of loss which at first threatened to over¬ 
whelm me when she passed into her present sphere of use¬ 
fulness; for she was soon able to reach me through the 
internal tie which had been formed by this interlocking of 
our finer-grained material atoms while in the flesh, and it 
was only during the short interval consequent upon their dis¬ 
location from the atoms of ordinary matter that my suffering 
was acute. On the re-establishment of the vital connection 
between us under new and more powerful conditions, I was 
enabled to advance into the appreciation of knowledge which 
had been concealed from me; but this enlightenment never 
takes the form of being projected upon my brain from any 


INSPIRATION BY ATOMIC COMBINATION. 


55 


outside source, but rather as a spontaneous idea suggested by 
my own consciousness, and yet accompanied by the peculiar 
internal sensation produced by this atomic interaction, which 
is sufficient to check me if, in writing, I am following a cur¬ 
rent of thought which is in opposition to hers, and to convey 
to me a sense of approval when I have succeeded in con¬ 
veying the idea which, interweaving itself with mine in the 
atomic cerebral processes, she desires to have conveyed. 

It will readily be understood that nothing but what I 
conceive the paramount importance of the subject I am here 
endeavouring to elucidate, and of the interest to humanity 
at large which it involves, would induce me to enter upon 
these details; but they were necessary as an illustration of 
a certain form of inspiration—the atomic combination having 
been formed on earth — which involved a duplex cerebral 
action in order to the composition and production of a book. 
That atomic combination, composed as it was of those finer 
particles of two separate organisms which do not corrupt 
with the flesh, although dislocated at the juncture of their 
withdrawal from the coarse atoms of the one organism at the 
moment of death, could soon recover the faculty of reforming 
a new and more effective combination with the corresponding 
atoms in the one still alive, with which they had formerly 
been associated; the very fact of such previous association 
rendering a union of atoms possible, which would otherwise 
have been impossible. In the case of ‘ Sympneumata/ the 
elements which I contributed could only be so contributed 
during a period of entire mental inactivity on my part; for 
if I allowed my mind to work, I withdrew them from my 
wife—in other words, she appropriated all the powers of my 
mind, whatever these may be, incorporated them with her 
own by a process of which she was entirely unconscious ; and 
the result was a composition containing ideas which were, 
many of them, new to both of us until they appeared in 
manuscript. A somewhat similar process is taking place 
now, and the means whereby I can distinguish one influence 
from any other, arises out of the fact of this prior intimate 
atomic association, which has so interwoven the subtle ele¬ 
ments of our organisms, that their separation could not take 
place without producing premature physical death in my case, 


56 


SCIENTIFIC .RELIGION. 


and acute suffering in hers. It is therefore quite impossible 
for any other influence to hold the ground thus occupied 
without involving dire disaster. At the moment of my death, 
which may occur at any moment from natural causes, this 
union will still remain intact; but means have been pro¬ 
vided, into which it is not necessary now to enter, which 
will enable me to leave behind organisms as internally 
atomically united with the joint organisms of my wife, 
and myself, though both in another state of existence, as 
we are to each other; but this is not possible except 
in the cases of those who have succeeded in forming a 
pneumatic atomic union here. These, however, will con¬ 
stantly increase in number as these truths come to be under¬ 
stood and acted upon, under the direction of those who have 
become conversant with their laws, and as they augment will 
the force and grandeur of the inspirational descent increase. 
This is necessary, for were it otherwise, an infernal inspira¬ 
tional invasion would sweep through the world, without any 
counteracting agency to check the disastrous consequences 
which would result from it, and which, in spite of the 
divine antagonistic inspiration which is now gathering force 
to meet it, will still prove powerful enough to produce the 
moral convulsion to which I alluded in the introductory 
chapter. The reason why I venture to predict this is because 
this moral convulsion has already begun in the unseen world, 
and its influence on this one must sooner or later be felt here. 

The test of the value and nature of an inspiration is to be 
found in the efficiency of the remedy it proposes to meet 
the pressing human needs. Inspirations that do not pretend 
to grapple with the earth malady, and attack it at its root, 
lack the essential quality which is contained in the divine 
love for humanity, and which, as I propose to show later, was 
the one supreme animating principle of Christ, who was 
such an incarnation of divine inspiration as was never mani¬ 
fested upon the earth either before or since, and who is now 
the radiative centra of the seen and unseen worlds, which, 
enfolded one within the other, compose one system for the 
radiative influence of the highest forms of inspiration; and 
it will be found that all inspirations which ignore Him as 
their source, through whatever channel they may come, de- 


DISCIPLINES ESSENTIAL TO INSPIRATION. 


57 


generate into speculative theories as to the nature and com¬ 
position of man, and the cosmogony of the universe, which 
have no direct bearing upon its present actual condition 
with a view to fundamentally changing it; but which at¬ 
tempt rather to solve, ex cathedra, such problems as the 
■character of man’s previous existence, his reincarnation, his 
progress through future conditions, and final fate, than how 
to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, and infuse 
moral vitality into those who are spiritually dead to their 
obligations to God and their fellows. 

In order to prepare the will, the affections, and the intel¬ 
lect to be collectively the transmitting media of an inspira¬ 
tion which shall have a minute and practical bearing in this 
sense, their training and discipline must have lain in the 
performance of minute and practical details, controlled the 
while by an absorbing desire to perform them as an act of 
worship to God, and of benefit to the race. In the degree 
in which this motive dominates all thought of self, whether 
in the most sacred family affections or in the ambition for 
spiritual progress of a personal character, will the divine 
inspiration descend into these minute and practical details, 
•and the human problem begin to find its solution in the 
small everyday cares of life. The light which shines in upon 
.a man who is sitting under a bo-tree with his eyes on his 
nose, or in a cave tapping a gourd, is of a very different 
■quality. It may unfold to him the views of those in another 
state of existence with whom he is in atomic rapport , about 
the seven principles of which he is composed, and of the 
various stages through which human beings, after leaving 
this world, may pp^s before they return to it again, and what 
they may have been in a previous state of existence, but it 
gives him no hints as to social reconstruction in this one. 

By abstaining from eating meat, by always eating alone, in 
■order to avoid contagious magnetism, and by various other 
•corporal disciplines, he may attract from his invisible associ¬ 
ates into his organism such powerful magnetic forces as to 
enable him to make converts by hypnotic suggestion, or raise 
his body in the air, or suspend his respiration for an in¬ 
definite time; but so far from feeding others, as a rule he 
makes them feed him ; so far from bearing their burdens, they 


58 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


bear his—in spite of his powers of levitation ; and the final 
result of more than three thousand years of this kind of 
inspiration has been to crowd a greater number of idle useless 
monks, of ragged religious mendicants, and of revolting fakirs, 
upon a given area of the world’s surface, than can be found 
in the same space in any other part of the world. 

The most ancient religions of the East, whilst, as I shall 
presently show, they contain most valuable fundamental 
truths, have thus degenerated into practices by their devotees 
productive of no good to the human race, and the effort to 
apprehend mysteries which will help to raise man to a higher 
moral level, by attempting to put any such practices into 
operation in crowded cities of the West, exposed at all points 
to a hurricane of conflicting magnetisms, and in the midst 
of perverted social conditions, can only result in disappoint¬ 
ment, and in inspirations of a most turbid and fantastic 
order. Those who think they can obtain light by sitting 
round tables with their little fingers joined, through mediums, 
whether professional or otherwise, are indulging hopes no 
less futile, so far as the direct application of what they re¬ 
ceive to the great human needs is concerned. As a rule such 
communications are given to satisfy a curiosity which, if not 
altogether idle, is at all events rarely the result of an absorb¬ 
ing desire to find out what God’s will is, and at all costs to 
do it; and such is the only motive by which an inspiration 
worth anything can be invoked, but even then it will be 
found that it cannot be relied upon as a guide. There is 
absolutely no certainty as to the source from which it springs 
or the channel through which it has reached the medium, 
who is in his turn the automatic mouthpiece of an unknown 
influence, who is by no means independent of the physical, 
moral, and psychical conditions of the medium. Whatever 
be the source, then, of the purest communication, it only 
finally reaches the recipient, charged with the taint of those 
lower influences who — except under very special circum¬ 
stances—alone frequent spiritualistic stances, in spite of the 
surface beauty of utterance, and with the taint not only of 
the medium, but of many others who take part in the 
performance. 

Those who are so constituted that they can receive their 


MEDIUM 1STIC CONDITIONS. 


59 


own impressions privately, provided they do not allow them¬ 
selves to be used automatically, are far more favourably cir¬ 
cumstanced; but even then they are as a rule too full of 
preconceived theological or other prejudices of their own, to 
receive anything which transcends the commonplace, though 
occasionally, as in the case of some of the inspirational works 
referred to in a former page, they do transcend it, and that 
in a very remarkable degree; but these instances are com¬ 
paratively rare, and the effusions, though often containing 
hints of sublimS truths side by side with most exaggerated 
statements, 1 are generally worded so obscurely as to be un¬ 
intelligible to the general reader, and not unfrequently to the 
writers themselves. This arises largely from the fact that 
the difficulty of conveying ideas thus presented in simpler 
language is extreme, and depends mainly on the processes of 
discipline which have been previously gone through as a pre¬ 
paration for their reception. If these have involved much 
study of other mystical writers, or abstract contemplation, or 
bodily austerities, unaccompanied by active physical labour 
to maintain a general equilibrium of the faculties, the in¬ 
spiration is apt to be abstruse, mystical, or fanciful; because 
it is impossible for an influence, however pure and powerful, 
to communicate in such a manner as to be independent of 
the psychical condition of the medium; and the spiritual 
projection always finds its way into ultimate expression 
heavily charged with the idiosyncrasies, modes of thought 
and of phrase, and hereditary or acquired prejudices and 
tendencies of the human author. There is no human being, 
whatever may have been his training, who can avoid this* 
and it applies to this, and to every book, prophecy, or teach¬ 
ing which has ever attempted to convey subsurface ideas- 
to the surface consciousness. Still this is no reason why 
those who have cause to believe that they have been charged 
with messages pregnant with import to humanity, should 

1 In illustration of this I may mention that no less than four individuals 
have come under my own observation who were informed inspirationally that, 
they were immortal and would never see death in this world—of these the- 
two most notable were “ Jezreel,” the author of the ‘ Flying Roll,’ and T. L. 
Harris, the author of the ‘Arcana of Christianity.’ Of these four Mr Harris 
alone survives. 


60 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


mot give them to the best of their ability : it is only a reason 
why each such message should be fully tested on its own 
merits, why none should be regarded as infallible, and why 
those who become conscious of an inward monition convey¬ 
ing to them the impression that they may be chosen as 
messengers, should shrink from no sacrifice in the effort to 
fit themselves for the fulfilment of their mission. 

If, with a most profound sense of my utter unworthiness 
for the task, I now venture to think that the time has come 
when these lines may be written, it is because I can no 
longer resist the impulsion to put into words, the thoughts 
that imperatively demand expression. This impulse was felt 
after an unconscious incubation, lasting many years, and for 
which I was prepared, together with my wife, by a long 
period of suffering and privation, involving the abandonment 
of country, family, and human ambitions, and during which 
time I worked as a day-labourer under a broiling sun, teamed 
as a common teamster through the rigours of a Canadian 
winter, served as a common domestic servant and cook’s 
• assistant, peddled grapes and flowers in American villages, 
lived at one time a life of almost absolute solitude, cooking 
my own meals, and holding no intercourse with the outer 
world; during several years I even remained separated from 
my wife, who at the same time, but in another part of the 
•country, was either performing domestic housework, or earn¬ 
ing her daily bread as a seamstress, or by giving lessons in 
music and painting, or as an under-mistress in a school. 
All this we did under a direction for which I shall ever feel 
:grateful, although it involved a loss of many thousands of 
pounds; but it would have been absolutely valueless, had 
not the contact into which we were thus thrown with persons 
of divers nationalities and degrees brought us into an in¬ 
ternal sympathy with them, the nature and efficacy of which 
depended in its turn upon the fact that the ruling motive of 
our action, which was steadily kept uppermost in our minds, 
was, that we submitted to it all in the one hope that we 
might thereby become the more available instruments in 
God’s hands. 

I have ventured thus briefly into my own experiences, not 
for the purpose of suggesting that exactly similar ones are 


TRANSMUTATION OF FORCES. 


61 


necessary for others, but with the view of illustrating the 
different psychical effect which must result from discipline 
of this kind, as contrasted with that which ascetics impose 
upon themselves, and the different inspirations which must 
ensue therefrom. The object to be attained in both cases 
is, an entire change in the distribution of the atomic particles 
composing the animal magnetic force, so as to render them 
susceptible by magnetic contact to the highest order of beings 
in the unseen world, and impervious to the invasion of 
counter-currents, whether from persons in this world or the 
other. 

The ascetic endeavours to arrive at this condition by aus¬ 
terities, dirt, contemplation, isolation, trances, and lik^ ab¬ 
normal, physical, moral, and psychical efforts. The result 
is, that he infallibly attracts to himself kindred unseen in¬ 
fluences, and while his magnetic forces undergo the change 
he desires, he becomes confirmed in his belief in the value of 
the process by which it has been accomplished, and receives 
without question the gloomy impressions of this world and 
the other, and man’s mission and destiny, which they convey 
to him, mingled at the same time with lofty elevation of 
thought, a high moral code, and motives which to some 
natures, though they are more or less vague and shadowy, 
are not without their fascination. 

In the case of those seeking their inspirations through the 
labour of their hands, and the active development of their 
affections towards those who are animated by the same mo¬ 
tives themselves, ancTco-operating with them, they also attract 
to themselves kindred influences who are engaged in the 
unseen world in active service for God and the neighbour,, 
who are full of the potent energies of this service, which, 
they communicate to those engaged in it here, thus inter¬ 
locking their atoms with those of their mortal associates,, 
and conveying to their minds the ideas which enable these 
latter to perform the unaccustomed details of manual labour, 
under an inspiration which compensates for the lack of pre¬ 
vious training, and brings with it a sense of joy to which the 
artisan or peasant, working for his daily wage, is an absolute 
stranger. Why this must be so may easily be understood,, 
by the experience familiar to those who have had anything. 


62 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


to do with prison discipline. Men who are turning a tread¬ 
mill-wheel, which they know is doing nothing but revolving 
uselessly, suffer far more than if they knew it was attached 
to mill-stones which were grinding the corn to make their 
bread. The notion that the painful effort they are making 
is going to result in something, produces quite a different 
atomic combination from that which is produced by the con¬ 
viction that it will result in nothing. And in the same way, 
the efforts that are made by a man who is learning how to be 
a carpenter, in order to arrive at a point that will enable him 
to sympathise internally with the artisan class, and so carry 
out a divine purpose, are quite different in their effect upon 
the atoms of his whole moral and physical structure, from 
what they would be if he was learning the trade because he 
had no other way of making a living for himself. But his 
endeavours in this direction have a far wider purpose than 
merely the outpouring of sympathy and the corresponding 
moral change which results from it. They go to the root 
of the matter which vexes his heart, and suggest the only 
remedy possible for the world’s malady. For as he labours 
thus side by side with his fellow-men, tilling, perhaps, the 
land, and ploughing deep furrows into his own soul, which 
are destined in good time to bring forth an abundant crop, 
he perceives that he is in fact laying the foundations of a 
reconstructed society; and a vista opens out to his charmed 
gaze of co-operative industries, harmonious communities, and 
a political system in which liberty, equality, and fraternity 
shall develop under the aegis of absolute authority, and in 
association with a hierarchy composed of such different 
degrees of rank as correspond to their fitness to enjoy it. 

The form which inspirations take, derived under these 
influences, is eminently practical, and those who seek truth 
thus find in their hours of hardest ^labour the solution of 
economic, social, and political problems suggested to them 
sometimes with marvellous lucidity and clearness; but they 
find, moreover, that all inspiration of this sort depends upon 
a correspondence between the results which they are pro¬ 
ducing practically, with those that reach them theoretically, 
and that they can only propose them on a large scale, in the 
degree in which they have been found to work on a small one. 


CONSOLIDATED MAGNETISMS. 


63 


Just as the first investigator into electricity could not 
logically assert that it might some day be possible to send 
a message round the world, until he had experimentally 
proved that he could make a needle vibrate by the force of 
a current passed from one end of his laboratory to the other, 
so, though the mental vision may picture a society perfectly 
constituted, on certain given principles, by the proper appli¬ 
cation of certain forces, it is necessary to begin by the 
application of those forces to the home, and work out the 
conditions of their application there. If, under this practi¬ 
cal inspiration, which does not confine itself to ideas, but 
penetrates into atoms of the physical organism, directing with 
its energies the very fibres and muscles of the frame, a sat¬ 
isfactory result is produced, there is no reason why it should 
not be extended to another home; as the instinct of people 
seeking the same inspiration is to aggregate together, a com¬ 
munity harmonised by a common inspiration would thus be 
formed, later on growing into a town, then becoming the centre 
of a district, and so increasing into a province, which, in its 
turn, should expand into a country, and gradually extend its 
influence, in the degree in which its consolidated magnetisms, 
all bearing the same current, attracted those who felt the 
attraction of sympathy, and repelled those who felt the repul¬ 
sion of antipathy; and as the laws which govern magnetism 
in the human organism are more or less identical with those 
which govern it in other substances, the smallest home could 
thus radiate the divine magnetism which it had received to an 
infinite extent, with no sense of loss or waste. 

In order to illustrate the difference between mystical and 
practical inspiration, and to convey some idea of the prin¬ 
ciples upon which an inspired home should be constructed, I 
will here introduce a paper, dictated to me by my wife soon 
after we made our home in Palestine, and which is called 
“The Introduction to the House-Book.” 


64 




CHAPTER IV. 


INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE-BOOK ; A TREATISE ON DOMESTIC LIVING*. 
BY THE LATE MRS OLIPHANT—REASONS WHY HOUSEHOLDS SHOULD- 
BE FORMED TO SECURE THE ADVENT OF IDEAL GOOD—MANNER OF 
LIFE TO BE NEITHER LAVISH NOR PARSIMONIOUS — REASONS FOR 
THIS — RELIGION NOW TO BE THE POSSESSION OF EACH MAN — ALL 
BORN TO ENACT, WHAT WAS FORMERLY TAUGHT — FAMILY GROUPS 
A MACHINERY FOR SOCIAL SERVICE — NECESSITY FOR THE PROTEC¬ 
TION AND NOURISHMENT OF A HOME—ALL ARTIFICIAL DISTINCTIONS 
OF RANK, OCCUPATIONS, AND CREEDS ABOLISHED — MAKERS AND 
MAINTAINERS OF THE FAMILY RESPONSIBLE FOR ITS DEVELOPMENT 
— THE QUALITIES REQUIRED FOR SOCIAL REDEMPTION — ALL TO 
STAND IN SYMPATHY TO THE LAWS OF EARTH’S SOCIETY BUT NOT 

TO BE SUBJUGATED BY THEM—ANGELIC CO-OPERATION WITH MEN- 

DIVISION OF RESPONSIBILITIES—ASSISTANCE IN LABOUR—SUBORDIN¬ 
ATION TO LAW—NOTES OF EXPENDITURE, 

It may at first sight seem superfluous, and almost absurd, 
to preface a mere series of memoranda about simple house¬ 
keeping, with any explanation of the grounds upon which that 
housekeeping is carried forward. But there are various reasons 
which excuse this ceremony on the present occasion. The 
people who will use the following memoranda to refresh 
their memories, or to suggest the simple methods of life, are 
the people who, above all other desires, cherish that of under¬ 
standing fully each other’s motives and methods of work even 
in the slightest details, in order that the work which they 
may share may rest upon a perfect unity of motive and of 
method, and so establishing this unity amid the multiform 
necessities of domestic life, that such an organisation may 
admit of any work being performed according to convenience, 
now by one person, now by two, or now by twenty, &c. 




THE FORMATION OF HOUSEHOLDS. 


65 


whilst this power of contraction and expansion in different 
branches of necessary work, must be secured for a system of 
life in \ hich the individual must not be sacrificed for the 
work, nor the work for the individual, but in which both 
the members and the versatility of faculty would suffice to 
meet the fluctuating demands of daily needs; the methods of 
training the co-operating units in any household into this 
facile, expansive, and contractive machinery will be discussed 
a little further on, it being here in place to refer first to the 
reasons for domestic living which bring together the children 
of the sympneumatic era. 

Let it then at once be established that it can never be 
asserted that any special manner of co-operative living is 
per se better or worse than another; that families large or 
small, households large or small, divisions into ones or twos, 
or agglomerations of the size of communities, are to be ad¬ 
justed beforehand as necessarily superior or inferior forms 
for the interdisplay of human love and power. Men and 
women should at all times select and reject their ways and 
means of righteous action, unhampered by any fixed opinions 
as to the relative merits among the rich choice of manners 
which experience and possibilities present. 

The little household in which these lines are penned, has 
constituted itself by virtue of the apparent accidents of the 
moral and physical necessities of its various members, numbers 
of whom are not even able to be continuously resident in it. 
Its members, therefore, set up no pretension to offer, either by 
their number or by their differences of nationality, of occupa¬ 
tion, or of age, any special model of what any other house¬ 
hold actuated by the same motives, and following the same 
fundamental methods, should be; for the essential living in 
homes of one blood, of one country, of one generation, or of 
fewer or greater numbers, or with entirely different pursuits, 
would be identical with theirs, wherever the belief were alight 
that men and women work to secure the advent through¬ 
out all the earth of ideal good—work in the presence and 
with the powers of a loftier order of unseen human beings, 
and do this equally in the minute or in the magnificent actions 
which they may deem it proper to perform. This little house¬ 
hold has selected, however, its present scale of style with a 

E 


66 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


motive and a plan somewhat more important than the mere 
guidance of external possibilities or desirabilities alone,—that 
is to say, that in deciding whether to have paid servants, and 
what servants to have; how many meal-times to establish, and 
what to place upon the table; what branches of semi-domestic 
industry to associate with the housekeeping (such as farming, 
chicken-keeping, bee-keeping, gardening, &c.); on what scale 
to facilitate by comfortable provision of domestic articles the 
various works, or in what measure to sacrifice temporarily 
the facility of work for economy of utensils,—I repeat, in de¬ 
ciding these things, it is making an effort to do something 
more than live honourably and rationally: it is trying to find 
a mariner of life that shall be neither lavish nor parsimonious, 
that shall differ alike from the habits of the self-indulgent 
and the depraved—a manner of living to which the luxurious 
classes would readily, and without loss of health or mental 
vigour, descend, did they see a reasonable purpose for so doing, 
and to which all who live coarsely or poorly could be expected 
to rise with the better distribution of society’s resources, when¬ 
ever their improved intellectual condition demands for them a 
richer stock of the elements of food, of comfort, and of ease, 
than the masses of working men have hitherto been able to 
control. This little household would be ready to reconcile 
some people with a relative simplicity of living, and to call up 
some into a relative affluence: it is groping for ways of draw¬ 
ing together the extremes of waste and of want, of superfluity 
and of insufficiency, of suggesting the creation of recruits for 
the most divergent classes of earth’s civilisation; and of the 
new middle class, whose function will not be that of preying 
upon the classes on either side of it, while it transmits the 
means of life from one to the other, but that of feeding in 
such diverse forms the legitimate wants of men, that they will 
be drawn together in it away from all the antagonisms estab¬ 
lished by their present unsatisfied requirements. 

This search for moderation in the demands of daily life 
should not at the present day be a mere accidental result 
of necessity. The middle line of conduct serves no high 
spiritual end, while it is simply the line into which indi¬ 
viduals are forced by artificial influences. There is no merit 
and no use in being neither rich nor poor, but something 


MEDIOCRITY OF CIRCUMSTANCE. 


67 


between rich and poor, if we cannot help ourselves; and in 
point of fact, if there is to be no exercise of personal intention 
in the style of circumstance in which we live, the middle 
style of moderation is not the one which people of high aspira¬ 
tion would wish to have offered to them, for it is, of all styles 
of living, the least generative of spiritual vitality. Devotion 
to high thought, and reverence for what is pure and elevating 
throughout human life, springs up more readily among people 
who are rich enough to pay others for relieving them entirely 
of every acquaintance with the methods of material existence. 
The trials of real poverty protect and urge the spirit, so that 
many of its virtues spring up in that condition which are 
almost lost to any other; but life which is without physical 
privation, but in which sufficiency depends upon the personal 
■effort to acquire and manage material resources, is neither high 
nor low enough for excellence to be easy. It neither helps 
men to suffer, nor places them so far beyond suffering that 
they are ashamed not to aspire; and it is inclined to breed 
in them a stupid satisfaction in the easy accomplishment of 
operations requiring a purely material order of faculty, and 
resulting in nothing higher than the comfort and satisfaction 
of a few individuals. 

Nevertheless a wise mediocrity of circumstance will neces¬ 
sarily be adopted more and more by all people who seek the 
•general good; for those who can command luxury and the 
displays required for the forwarding of private and family 
ambition, will more and more refrain from wasting upon 
these the superfluity which they will prefer to devote to the 
better regulation of general social necessities; and on the 
other hand, such efforts as the wealthiest are at this day more 
and more desirous to put forth, will enable the poor to tend 
more to comfort. A condition, therefore, of moderate ease, 
in spite of its tendency to deaden spiritual sensibility, is 
the only one fitted to a rational moral development; and 
the art must be discovered of utilising it without falling into 
moral sloth for lack of privation, and of maintaining a con¬ 
centrated aspiration for mental and spiritual growth in spite 
of labours amidst the material bases of earthly existence. 
We must learn to seize all the more delicate elements that 
the human spirit is accustomed to develop in its extremes of 


68 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


suffering and of refinement, and bind them to the wheels 
of vulgar working-day machineries. We must do this to 
redeem these machineries from misapplication to ends of mere 
private gain. We must not forget that the risk of decaying 
spiritually is all the greater with all those people who are 
conscientiously unable any longer to recognise as duties the 
demands of ecclesiastical organisations: these, at the time of 
their vigour, have always imposed practices which reminded 
men, at recurring intervals of time, that they lived for some¬ 
thing beyond material good. But a great number of those 
natures most deeply fraught at this day with the desire of 
obtaining and distributing all highest sorts of excellence, find 
in themselves no response whatever to the expectations of 
any Church, and these have to beware lest ease of life, and 
the withdrawal even from ignoble effort, do not obscure their 
sense of the inner personal sanctuary where the divine pres¬ 
ence dictates in the still small voice. 

For that which has been called religion, and which has 
rested on wide bases of popular assent, has grown to self- 
dependence among men, and is now, or must be made, the 
personal possession of each one. As it fades out of public 
institutions, or as its practical influence weakens there, as the 
most earnest, single-minded, and spiritual people require less 
and less the forms and formularies of Churches, or obey them 
mearly by innocent acts of social custom, that condition of 
high spirituality and morality which these Churches fostered 
in their day, which has outgrown their comprehension now, 
but is itself religion, this must be held by each individual as 
the atmosphere in which to act daily and hourly in the whole 
effort of duty. Individuals now generate religion as of old, 
but not isolated individuals—for this has man “evolved.”' 
But as the responsibility lay heavy upon the souls who for¬ 
merly were charged, rarely with great powers of mind and 
thought, to give them forth to mankind; as would have been 
the loss if mighty teachers turned aside from the effort to> 
deliver their high instruction,—so now is the responsibility 
with each, when all are born to enact that which used to* 
be taught—so now is the loss to the whole mass of men, if 
any one fails to live striving to enact it. 

It is this maintenance of the highest possible level of re- 


NEED OF FAMILY GROUPS. 


69 


ligious vitality in practical life, that is the all-sufficient reason 
why people should associate in groups, why homes should 
exist,—whether the individuals which compose them are 
drawn together by the apparent accident of blood or of 
material necessity, or whether by any more conscious pro¬ 
cess of mutual selection, it matters not. The home, the place 
where a rich atmosphere of varying elements of mind and 
spirit can be generated, protected, consolidated, and set in 
activity, is a necessary integer of elevated social conditions. 
If family connections, and the repose of all familiar customs 
which grow up in them, are not a means of obtaining strength 
of united moral action, they miss the performance of their 
proper function, and generate, perforce, harm to the world’s 
interests, instead of help. But because this may be, it does 
not disprove the fact that ties of blood, which are the soil of 
spontaneous loves and virtues, of honour, fortitude, patience, 
and self-control, should be the strength and background of 
world-service, as they are fraught with power, even in their 
lowest development, to reveal the innate altruism of the 
human being. When the true strength of family groups is 
better understood in the research that man begins to institute 
for material of beneficence, the social brigandage which they 
now exercise, by means of their relative unity of action, will 
be converted instead into a machinery for social service. 
But unity of action, whether among blood relations or among 
people drawn together by sympathy or mutual dependence 
of any kind, is the great social necessity of the hour. The 
statement is not new: co-operation, and moral as well as 
material co-operation, is a cry that recent generations have 
learnt to repeat, and co-operative action is no longer an 
unknown thing. But the full meaning and necessity of 
spiritual unity is not generally understood; and is least un¬ 
derstood, as a rule, by those people who are the most generous 
of their time and service in seeking general reforms. For 
public services, social or industrial, it is not difficult at this 
day to find people who will act harmoniously to [improve 
the outer forms of life; nor has it been at any time otherwise 
than easy for bodies of people with any distinct religious bias, 
to recruit members willing and anxious to distribute physical 
relief by common methods as an assistance to the persuasion 


70 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


of religious forms; but the natural order of spiritual and 
social development requires co-operative unity in private as 
well as in public life—nay, requires it in the minutiae of the 
home circle as the basis of all vaster co-operation. 

Those who go forth out of divided and unsympathetic 
private atmospheres, to enforce propriety in the various- 
branches of public life, carry with them a theory, an intel¬ 
lectual conception of things that should be, but carry no ele¬ 
ments of moral life, to create growth of co-operative intelli¬ 
gence among those for whom they labour. There is no truly 
reproductive species of virtue or moral power but that with 
which men and women are elementally charged,—no virtue 
or power with which men or women can impregnate others, 
so that they in their turn produce them afresh, except what 
has developed in each one by solid growth of moral particles 
which pervade the being; and this growth in each person of 
a healthy and potent moral organisation, as well as its con¬ 
stant increase in maturity, requires, as imperatively as the 
wellbeing of the physical constitution, the repose, the protec¬ 
tion, the nourishment, and the pleasure of familiar home sur¬ 
roundings. It requires the simple essences that are struck 
forth by simple acts. It requires primary examples of the 
great social needs. It must call its own a dwelling-place 
where direct ministrations of love are easy, to keep alive the 
absolute conviction that love exists. It requires home, as 
meat or raiment or sleep, for the maintenance of its growing 
condition. Thus the tone of the familiar life becomes a more 
and more important matter for consideration to those who 
contribute to it,—more and more important with the uprising 
throughout the social bosom of this true sense, that social 
purity and truth and energy must now be striven for, and 
that the power of close co-operation is necessary to this strife; 
for there is no perfect knowledge nor practice on a large scale, 
that has not first been learnt upon a small, and he cannot 
contribute to true unity in great and far-spreading services, 
who has not learnt to practise it in the minute things of home. 

The value of these groupings of individuals in intimate 
juxtaposition is incalculable: there are no other circumstances 
which are capable of producing the same results; and these 
results in the individual are indispensable, at this period of 


SELF-CRITICISM. 


71 


high social effort, to the lofty character which society strains 
to embody. 

Such convictions lying at the root of the action which drew 
together the little fraternity here alluded to, it is evident 
that each member of it must adopt, with a solemn sense of 
responsibility to the world at large, whatever occupation befits 
them within it, or whatever they befit. 

It is this sense of responsibility, this solemnity, which at¬ 
taches to the action of all members of such a household while 
they constitute it, which makes them, old or young, embrace 
life now, not less as a training process than as a field for 
work. 

Those who have begun, however totteringly, to “ walk with 
angels”—those even who but begin to train their faculties 
unto this thought, lest perchance they miss its truth—begin 
also to measure themselves with the ideal, with the true facts 
of higher human nature, with personalities whose type has 
hitherto drawn all pure imaginings before towards itself in 
aspiration, but who now join hands with men and women on 
planes of growing consciousness. Yes; now we look on this 
image and on that—those of us who will—we compare what 
we are, with the perfect manhood with which we feel, with 
greater or lesser clearness, that we have companionship, and 
we work to change ourselves. The nearer that the far ideal 
draws to us, the more we see the differences between it and 
ourselves; and as we would grow like it for great services on 
earth, as we would w,ork by power of better natures against 
the sufferings and the vices of earth’s masses, we must first 
establish this bettering of ourselves in the humble sphere of 
home. Thus we are obliged to exercise a self-criticism which 
magnifies each slight defect into a subject of world import¬ 
ance, for slight defects jar on the harmony, the regularity, the 
calmness, and the whole beauty of the domestic circle — 
jarring, in fact, the actual spiritual organisation of each mem¬ 
ber of it, whose action then upon the outer world, whenever 
exercised, is by that jar impaired—and not only must the 
members of households watch inquisitorially against their 
personal imperfections, to restrain them ceaselessly, holding 
these imperfections as being each one injurious to universal 
interests; but for the development of a large and generous 


*72 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


wisdom, for the preparation of vaster organisations in the 
future, they must question constantly of their habits and 
their methods, whether they are such as would conduce to 
every highest interest, if used by tens and hundreds of people 
as well as by two or three. 

The effort, therefore, to formulate and to obey simple and 
broad rules in the conduct, of daily life, is more than import¬ 
ant,— it is indispensable to all servants of God’s world. 
Being thus indispensable, the little bands of workers who 
are devoted to it have their necessary places in the social 
scheme; and having these, their duty to fit themselves for 
every detail of united labour is as necessary to general pro¬ 
gress as either the wise means that they would use materi¬ 
ally, or the high spiritual condition which they endeavour to 
establish. 

The difficulty of distributing financial responsibility in a 
satisfactory manner has broken up many of the best attempts 
at societary co-operation. It is probable that this responsi¬ 
bility, in common with others, the discharge of which affects 
equally every member of a family or group, will have to 
rest with all its weight and all its freedom upon one person. 
As time goes on, people will not be found lacking, who, in 
the name of the divinest service, the free evolution of the 
purest faculties of existing man, will gather others around 
them—their children, or their brothers, or their friends—the 
name of that service will prohibit disagreement of creed,— 
creeds and denial of creeds being all too weakly human, 
and too partial for the new necessity. It will prohibit all 
differences of social rank—these having done their service 
and become superfluous. It will prohibit artificial distinctions 
in diverse dignity in pursuits—this being obstructive to plea¬ 
sure in work, and to its right selection. It will prohibit every 
motive for personal effort, for personal virtue, for personal 
enjoyment, except that they are necessary to the general 
human interest. They will be brave men who will call others 
to follow under this banner, brave and bold, even though 
an inner light of strong perception, rational and instructive, 
guides them surely ; even though they know the attainments 
of strong developed faculty and enlightenment and power, 
that will grow beneath its folds upon each soldier that they 


HARMONY OF FEELING. 


73 


have called. They need their courage, although in clearest 
consciousness they call down, hold down, and irradiate 
heavenly forces in earth; for work, true work, is slow, con¬ 
tinuous, and quiet; yet the root of social excellence must 
thus be set. But the order of the courage they require is 
moral—the courage to maintain the purity of moral percep¬ 
tions—courage to enact spiritual convictions in the strained 
intervals of their fluctuation—courage to obey the voice 
within during the pleasure of its silences. The wear and 
tear of recklessness, of wilful improvidence, of disregard of 
the divine law throughout external nature, will not be in¬ 
curred by those who are seeking to draw forth inner wisdom 
into outer things; they will not kick against the known lim¬ 
itations of industrial possibilities; they will not court priva¬ 
tion or starvation in carelessness or wilfulness for those whom 
they would empower for all good work. If they invite co¬ 
operation, they must practise a keen and inspired discretion 
in recognising the signs of rational possibility of success. It 
is true that, being relieved of the desire to maintain all arti¬ 
ficial standards of what constitutes success, financial com¬ 
petence will often prove a sufficient basis for useful activities, 
whether of an intellectual or of a muscular nature, while ob¬ 
viously no one will struggle for enrichment by any processes 
that of necessity impoverish their neighbours, nor hold riches 
as per se valuable, or as certainly to be sought—the evidence 
of their use for special purposes requiring to be corroborated 
by the deepest andmiost earnestly sought internal guidance. 

We will assume, therefore, that a man, or, probably of ne¬ 
cessity, a man and woman, have summoned together, under 
the clearly felt guidance of God, people whose harmony of 
feeling is absolute in respect of the principles just enumer¬ 
ated, whose motto is free evolution; we will also assume that 
the wisdom of that gathering, of which the responsibility 
necessarily rests with those who have formed the group, is 
justified by a rational probability of providing the things 
necessary for daily life. This provision may at once exist 
in the established possessions of this head of the family, or it 
may exist partly in income contributed as shares by different 
members of the household, or it may exist only in the produce 
of the industry of the head and members. This gathering, 


74 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


to be a home, to be the indispensable fulcrum for power in 
far-spread labours, to be the battery of a love-force which 
shall unceasingly empower those who take rest in it, must 
be constituted in the form of a family of children, whose 
parents provide and guide. At the limits of the home this 
form breaks up; the various members who are not required 
for devotion to the immediate necessities of the establish¬ 
ment may be carrying on occupations single-handed, or in 
co-operation with others of every description; and in those 
occupations they will act as free individuals, or as members 
of associated bodies, in every diversity of manner. Profes¬ 
sions and industries of home management, unless they dis¬ 
tinctly form part of domestic economy, should remain free 
in their exercise—there should obviously be no limit to the 
variety of method under which industries or public services 
will be carried on, or to the different ways in which pro¬ 
fessions or other occupations will be pursued; but in the 
home which may be regarded as an artificial extension or 
reproduction of the natural family, a hierarchical system of 
direction is necessary for the spontaneous action constantly 
required in all its departments. 

Now it is evident from this, that people who would create 
domestic bodies as the kernels of a new and high social de¬ 
velopment, whether by the mere training of children of their 
own, dedicated by their very birth to this object, or by the 
moulding of people who join them in this plan, must do 
more than to foresee the spiritual ground solidified by a 
common aim, and the material ground made safe by a suffi¬ 
cient basis for the works proposed. They must be prepared 
themselves to regard each member of the group which becomes 
their family, as held by them in charge for the world’s service. 
These parents must take upon themselves the collection of all 
home funds, from whatever source contributed, in order to 
redistribute them with free exercise of judgment and of love 
among the members, according to the requirements of their 
moral and physical condition. They must remember that 
from the moment they have made themselves responsible 
to God for creating a domestic body, they cannot shift the 
responsibility of any action of which the results will affect 
the body as a whole. The responsibilities which they delegate 


ASSOCIATED EFFORT. 


75 . 


must be those connected with special branches of activity,, 
in which mistakes or failure will affect principally the special 
individuals charged with the control of such departments, and 
will only indirectly, and in unimportant degrees, affect the* 
whole. The heads, for example, while they may derive valu¬ 
able assistance from the perceptions and experience of any 
member of the household, with whom they will freely consult,, 
cannot divest themselves of the duty of acting freely for the 
immediate interests of the group, and for the greater interest 
of spiritual evolution in general society, by the choice they 
make of a general plan of life, of a locality to live in, of the 
people to draw into the sphere of their own ministrations, 
of those to be removed from it, of managers and assistants in 
each branch of help or service, of what advice to offer on 
moral questions affecting the action of individuals, on the 
little social body as a whole. In a word, the makers and 
maintainers of the family, whose existence they regard as 
fraught with infinite importance to the divine plan for earth, 
must freely make it in the best way that they can find. 
But they will institute a systematic attempt to develop in 
each individual the highest degree of responsibility in special 
functions that is compatible with their age, judgment, or 
faculty and moral condition. 

In view of the serious aspect which such efforts as are be¬ 
ing now discussed bear to those who maintain them, it will 
be no easy and no simple work to guard hourly against the- 
disintegration of such associations by individual lack of per¬ 
ceiving the interest of the mass, or by too great a concen¬ 
tration of the individual on the interests of the mass to the 
sacrifice of one another. Yet it is useless to embrace the 
leadership of any mass, unless it is possible to watch equally 
over the welfare of the whole, and the welfare of the parts. 
Neither will this leadership be successful, unless each member 
of the co-operative body that it associates shares with it, in 
the degree of his or her personal capacity, this sense of the 
serious and important nature of their work. This sense must 
be developed in the young and fed in the adult, as the very 
basis of a true moral atmosphere. 

It is not possible to produce lives which will show in joint 
action the qualities required for social redemption, unless the 


76 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


knowledge among them is strong and clear that they stand 
in weighty responsibility towards one another as individuals, 
and towards humanity as a group. To regard their position 
lightly or indifferently, is to annihilate it. 

Isolated lives have always shown, and show at this day, 
immeasurably the strongest and the purest material for 
humane action; but the work of the world has become 
gigantic at the period in which we live. Life in its modern 
-aspect creates co-operation in error: the vices, the industrial 
or social tyrannies, political rivalries, the craze for wealth, 
the pursuit of pleasure, in one place, reinforce—by the sym¬ 
pathy established throughout the civilised world in its ready 
intercommunication—all these things in every other place. 
It is not enough now to aim individually at affecting right¬ 
eously immediate surroundings. The immediate neighbours 
of any given person are a hundredfold more powerfully affected 
by the myriad influences that strike upon them from the 
vast social universe, than by any impulse which a mere indi¬ 
vidual could communicate. We must, if we aim at a univer¬ 
sal good, or indeed at any good, work in the methods cal¬ 
culated to affect large masses. The youth of the time instruct 
themselves for good or for evil out of the general movement, 
unconfined to country or to continent, and cannot be content 
to accept knowledge merely at the hands of parents, pastors, 
•or masters. The grandest work yet delegated to physical 
-sciences is accomplished. 

The life-appliances that they have produced, make each 
human being a child of the universe, and the ordinary asso¬ 
ciations of civilised life at this era, focalise upon each indi¬ 
vidual direct movement from every part of universal society. 

But if the gain be great of a personal acquaintance with 
the truth that each one is affected by the many scattered 
throughout the world, the danger is great of misunderstand¬ 
ing the divine purport of new possibilities thus opened for 
the individual and for the masses. 

It is well to stand in mental and emotional sympathy with 
the laws of earth’s vast society; but it is ill to be personally 
subjugated by them, as ill as to be subjugated by any more 
local tyrannies. Yet this is a common fate. Victims of the 
•confusion which reigns amid the raw processes of unification 


UTILISATION OF INDIVIDUAL FORCE. IT 

in world interests are countless—not less in retired domestic^ 
circles than in heaving political scenes. And for these- 
reasons associations of life among individuals become a neces¬ 
sity. They are necessary to protect in individuals their in¬ 
dividuality of power; they are necessary to produce a united 
individual power massive enough to affect society at large; 
and they are necessary, because, by their existence, they 
generate the only moral material which can be reasonably 
expected to hold a sufficient amount of force to influence the 
colossal development of modern life. Humanity has de¬ 
veloped needs so poignant, and individuals have responded 
so loudly those needs, that machineries must be found that 
will aim, by the utilisation of the greatest individual force,, 
at the widest social good. To aim at less is insult to the- 
constitution of individuals of the species now produced; and 
the aim of vast social rectitude, as motive for all individual 
action, is the only protection to be found for each individual 
against suppression by the vastness of existing social error. 

Thus a universal quality, so to speak, has to be introduced’ 
into the minutest efforts and actions of domestic life, con¬ 
secrating domesticity to the only true and persistent instincts^ 
of modern man, establishing at every hour the identity of 
the reason for mundane existence, with the reason of every 
exercise of man’s operative power during the course of it. If 
to live in order to induce co-operation with the divine ac¬ 
tivities throughout the world is good, it is not less good, as- 
an indispensable jpart of such living, to stand in the very 
current of these divine activities. With every motion of thn 
hand and every action of the mind operating in this spirit, 
and co-operating for this object, the order of the simplest, 
labours becomes experimental science, and the fitness for such; 
order of each labourer becomes to himself a subject of con¬ 
stant inquiry. Hence self-discipline and self-modification; 
will become the constant habit of each. They will scrutinise- 
themselves for those things which render them imperfect 
assistants of consolidated operativeness—knowing that the. 
quality of this operativeness must affect with endless con¬ 
sequences the future of all society. 

But it will suffice, without enlarging on the more purely 
ethical side of this subject, to mention that the most difficult 


78 


SCIENTIFIC EELIGION. 


part of this work of discipline and modification does itself \ 
"by the very fact of juxtaposition of natures according to laws 
—the laws of mutual relief of superfluous vitality by spiritual 
'organisms, as elsewhere described; and that it is generally 
sufficient to seek and recognise frankly the imperfections in 
question, to guard against the mental inertia which would 
otherwise impede the spontaneous action of true law. 

Each person will also work on all sides to perfect in the 
details of his duties what has been missing in his previous 
•education; and while this will be the more difficult for those 
who embark in co-operative efforts late in life, it will be the 
more necessary for them to do it in the degree of their op¬ 
portunity, because it is assumable that they may find them¬ 
selves, by the very reason of age and general experience, called 
upon at any moment to act as leaders, and to infuse a varied 
quality of power into the direction of many lives. It is diffi- 
•cult to say which is the more needful to true service in works 
both small and great, the little sciences of practical life, or 
the high arts and knowledge that place us in communication 
with the minds charged at all times with those inspirations 
by which man has been raised out of his grovelling among 
the bare necessities of physical existence. The superior ne¬ 
cessity of either will exist only to individuals who have been 
led by circumstances to a special neglect of one class of know¬ 
ledge. Those persons who have been obliged to confine the 
■application of their faculties more exclusively to the require¬ 
ments of the body in domestic and industrial arts, will feel 
more and more the degradation of exclusive participation in 
material interests, and will seize every opportunity of enter¬ 
ing the realms of intellectuality and spirituality, by acquaint¬ 
ing themselves with the rich products of the human spirit, 
mind, and imagination; by opening their blunted sensibilities 
to joy in art and beauty; and by storing their memories both 
with the acts of men and nations in all times, and their 
thoughts and mode of feeling, — because these acts and 
thoughts and feelings record the march of a divine growth on 
-earth. Those persons, on the other hand, who, by drift of 
-circumstance or pursuit of inclination, have held aloof from 
the whole region of material and industrial ways and means 
of living will condescend towards these in spite of personal 


DEPARTMENTS OF SERVICE. 


79 


disinclination, when they reflect that the higher qualities of 
spirit, developed by lives and generations among refined pur¬ 
suits, must be infused for the unification of the social body 
into material labours, that the basis of earthly existence may 
not remain foul when its superstructure can be so fair, and 
when they reflect further that no one can make this infusion, 
but he whose good fortune has developed in him the refining 
quality. Therefore the necessities are broad and many for 
meeting together of high and low, rich and poor, one with 
Another, when those come forth out of the ocean of vague 
social movement who see, or think they see, in the idea of 
Angelic co-operation in men, an explanation of the pressure 
now straining and fevering society, and a ground of faith in 
the rapid advance of society towards a state which human 
hearts desire. 

Even a few thus gathered together may be the central 
machinery of a mighty social engine, if they aim thus vastly 
And work thus minutely. There must be order in every work, 
—the order and discipline of responsibilities judiciously dis¬ 
tributed, faithfully recognised and clearly limited. It should 
be known to each and all, as much as possible, under whose 
eye each detail of work is performed. When the general 
■organisers have distributed the various domestic operations 
into their classes, and have laid the charge of each class 
upon special persons, and have selected for each the necessary 
Assistance, it will require care to avoid confusion, and for 
many reasons. Say, for instance, that while the group of 
those ready for responsible charge is still small, one person 
has charge of several departments of domestic operations, 
that person may have to instruct assistants, either co-operative 
volunteers or hired servants perhaps, in respect of these dif¬ 
ferent branches; that person must be careful to give such 
instruction to each assistant only in respect of the particular 
work of the said charge, and must not slide into the habit of 
offering suggestions to an assistant in this charge, about work 
performed by him or her at other hours under different 
superintendence. Any one person, volunteer or paid—that is 
to say, a corporate member or an accidental member of the 
household—may be helper in one or more departments, and 
may have full charge at the same time in several others, so 


80 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


that the boundary-line of these departments must be very 
exactly defined, or it will not be possible to know on what, 
points simply to perform work according to instructions, and 
on what points to exert authority over others, or individual 
freedom of idea. Again, any person may be invited to give- 
help temporarily at any moment in departments under others’ 
charge, and much of the charm and sweetness of united lives, 
arises from these spontaneous appeals from one another; but 
the person thus called in must be careful not to pervert the- 
circumstance of this call to an opportunity for interference 
with the individual responsibility of the one temporarily to 
be served. The most highly and extensively burdened with 
free responsibilities, must simply serve without criticism,, 
mental or expressed, when asked for help for the simplest and 
most mechanical operation. If the distribution of responsi¬ 
bility is clear, and the respect for them perfect, exchanges- 
of assistance can be infinite, and the painful monotony of 
unchanging labours will be pleasantly avoided; but until co¬ 
workers are skilled to discern disorder, it will easily occur,, 
and the most easily through the most generous and devoted. 
A kind person will, for instance, be inclined by the first, 
movement or impulse to obey at once any demand for help 
yet to obey it will often disturb the order of work. He mush 
therefore reflect if the call is legitimate or not, provided 
always that he has time and strength at his disposal for the- 
purpose. It is a legitimate call if the person who makes it 
has had given to him free responsibility for the work im 
question; in that case his freedom extends to the calling in 
of volunteer labour. It is not a legitimate call if the person 
who makes it serves in the work in question under the re¬ 
sponsibility of another. In this latter case, the assistant who. 
requires help should only obtain it through the responsible 
director or with his sanction. To illustrate this — a little 
child asks for some help in the matter of its play. This- 
is a just demand: it has been left free in that play, and is not. 
responsible to any one for the manner of its performance.. 
But suppose a person charged, we will say, on the one hand, 
with the whole administration of the cooking department, and. 
accustomed on the other to assist for one hour in making 
clothes, falls ill, she must act differently regarding the two- 


DISTRIBUTION OF RESPONSIBILITIES. 


81 


labours. In seeking her substitute, she will select one for 
the cooking amongst her own subordinates, or, not finding 
one, will refer the matter to the head of the house, and will 
not, of course, feel free to exercise her right of claim to friendly 
help, even as head of a department, if this would absorb the 
time required for the other duties ; but should the amount of 
help she wants require only the leisure of her neighbour, 
reference to the general head would not be necessary. As 
regards, on the other hand, the hour of needlework, she will 
obviously leave the choice of her substitute to the manager 
in that department. It is not difficult to train the least gifted 
with intellectual conceptions into obedience of the laws of 
organisation; and it is not difficult to reconcile the most 
spirited to perfect subordination, when it is the subordina¬ 
tion to useful and intelligible law. It is more difficult to dis¬ 
tribute each detail of a varied labour on a distinct organic 
scale, and watch over preservation of the whole plan by 
delicate guidance of authorities and obediences along their 
appointed channels; and this is an operation which, though 
it be necessary to all great and effective social work, should 
not be attempted even on a little scale by any one not pre¬ 
pared to guide individuals in their little acts with tender love, 
and to guard organisation as a holy principle with earnest 
devotion. 

On the other hand, so necessary is the preparation, obtained 
only through familiarity w T ith details for correct and benefi¬ 
cent organisation, that scarcely any sacrifice of time or per¬ 
sonal inclination is'too great a price for making it; and to 
work in meekness, in order as rapidly as possible to be 
fitted to watch over the lives of many others, is an ambition 
which will not unworthily replace many which are not pro¬ 
ductive of high moral and social evolution. 

The foregoing remarks were suggested by the simple neces¬ 
sity of having, even in a very small household, ample registries 
of possessions. On the grounds here stated, it will often be 
found necessary for people otherwise talented and capable 
of what might appear higher employments, to award some 
part of their lives to simple things, and to concentrate upon 
them earnest efforts for perfection. Thus the house-book, or 
books it may be, including lists, and rules, and recipes, and 


82 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


accounts, is a collection worthy of good faculties in the mak¬ 
ing, and of respect in the keeping of it. Current records, 
in the shape of accounts, lists, &c., of all operations, are more 
than ever indispensable to people who direct such operations, 
with the desire of training all engaged in them into such 
clear understanding of their effect, as will enable each one 
safely and intelligently to direct them on a still larger and 
larger scale. 

Now, to he ignorant of the amount of material invested 
in any given domestic work, of its changing market values, 
to fail in noticing the accustomed consumption and wear 
and tear of the material, and to make no record of these 
things, for the purpose of assisting memory, of clearing un¬ 
derstanding, and of instructing others,—is to carry forward 
a result, whatever artistic substitutes one may have at the 
moment, almost sterile from a co-operative point of view. 
To do well is very little, and may be less. To do well so 
as to make it possible and easy for others to do well also, 
and to do better, is necessary to work that makes its horizon 
wide. The type of persons who can produce good performance 
in any mode of labour by concentrating upon it their faculties 
with the single view of performing it well, is a very ordinary 
one; but the procreative quality of generous faculty at this 
date, requires us to develop a type of workers who hold the 
drive of personal energy in perpetual check; who scatter it 
by the way, preparing paths of others’ work; who inquire of 
their own performance constantly if it creates facilities for 
performance by others; who act in all things in reference to 
the acting power of others. He can no longer be esteemed an 
excellent workman who can only work excellently. For his 
work to prove that it is living, it must be generative; and 
it will not be generative unless the workman has his mind 
trained to a clear conception of his own methods, and their 
connection with the laws of nature; unless he can impart 
that understanding by word of mouth at any time or write 
it down; unless the sum of his experience, while he is 
constantly increasing it, is as constantly forced by him into 
mental shape easy of registration, and, whenever useful, reg¬ 
istered, so that it may be at all moments ready of access 
to all his fellow-creatures, and so that he may be at all 


RECORD OF EXPENSES. 


83 


moments in a mental position to impart his methods to others. 
We will suppose a household where there is no record kept 
of what moneys go for the buying of food, and what for the 
buying of clothes—that is to say, what sum for a purpose 
indispensable to health, and what for a more elastic necessity, 
—how can such a household know absolutely if it can afford 
to burden itself or not with the cost of another member, to 
whose destitution it might wish to minister ? It would answer 
the question at once if it had made note of such expenditures 
as could be reduced or postponed without danger to the general 
wellbeing, by deciding to moderate these; but it would not 
wisely add heavy burdens to itself if they necessitated in¬ 
fringing upon the sums devoted to absolute necessities. Still 
more important must it be to keep graduated accounts of 
funds embarked, say, in uncertain speculations, imperfectly 
tested industries, or fine arts, or things termed luxuries, which, 
rightly selected, develop the refinements that lurk within all 
natures, but which are all among the things which could be 
set aside for the sake of any more important duty. There 
-should, properly speaking, be no haziness about the financial 
condition of any occupation. What it represents of material, 
of labour, should stand clearly at all moments before the 
mind and before the eye of some one, and all people should 
be either possessed of the capacity for formulating clear ideas 
and statements concerning the value of labours, or be in train¬ 
ing for that purpose. 


84 


CHAPTER V. 

INSUFFICIENCY OF THE NATURAL REASON AS A GUIDE TO DIVINE TRUTH. 

BECAUSE IT CANNOT DIVEST ITSELF OF THE IDEAS OF TIME ANI> 

SPACE—HENCE THEOLOGY AND SCIENCE BOTH BLIND GUIDES—MAN 

THE ARENA OF CONFLICTING ATOMIC FORCES — TRANSMUTATION OF 

MATERIAL FORCES BY CONVERSION OF MORAL PARTICLES—METHODS- 

AND MANIFESTATIONS OF INFESTATION — ATOMIC CONSTITUTION OF 

MORAL ATMOSPHERE-PHENOMENA OF HEREDITY — ASTROLOGY — 

WILL-FORCE UNDER SPECIFIC INFLUENCE—FAITH-HEALING—ELIXIR 

OF LIFE — RADIATION OF DIVINE LIFE DEPENDS ON MAGNETIC! 

CONDITIONS — SUFFERING INVOLVED THEREBY — RELIGION USELESS 

AS A MEANS TO A PERSONAL END — WORLD-REGENERATION TO BE: 

ACCOMPLISHED BY A RADIATION OF DIVINELY INSPIRED HUMAN 

AFFECTION—INSPIRATION THREEFOLD : THROUGH UNION WITH GOD. 

r 

MAN, AND NATURE—POLLUTION OF ITS CURRENT THREEFOLD : BY 
PRIDE, BY SELFISHNESS, BY APATHY—ITS FORCE DEPENDS UPON ITS 
CONCENTRATION UPON GROUPS ANIMATED BY THE SAME MOTIVE. 

It is my hope that among those who have had the patience 
to follow me thus far, there may he some who will be ready 
to admit that we have reached ground where the theologian 
and the man of science may meet, without doing violence to- 
those conscientious convictions which have hitherto driven 
them into opposite extremes: these atoms, which form the 
essence, so to speak, of what has heretofore been considered 
“ matter,” and which are the transmitting media of procrea¬ 
tion and sustaining life, are sufficiently substantial to satisfy 
the requirements of science, while, as they also compose the 
immortal part of us, and are the habitations of thought 
and emotion, they should be sufficiently spiritual to satisfy 
the requirements of theology for those that make them. 
“ The existence of nothing ” being a contradiction in terms, 
the thing which exists, whether it be called body or soul. 





CONTEST BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY. 85 


matter or spirit, must consist of substantial force of some 
kind — indeed, it is stated of Christ in the Nicene Creed 
that He is of one substance with the Father. The reason 
why conclusions at which disputants have arrived are irrecon¬ 
cilable, is because they both persist in introducing into the 
consideration of the question the elements of time and space, 
which have no existence outside of the relation which they 
derive from that very limited class of faculties, which we 
call our senses. 

The revelations which we receive, as another class of 
faculty connected with our subsurface consciousness develops 
within us, are incapable of being transferred into language, 
because all our methods of verbal expression are derived from 
the experiences of our senses, with all their present limita¬ 
tions, and rest upon the assumption that time and space 
are realities,—just as another language and an entirely new 
vocabulary would need to be invented, to enable people who 
live in the third dimension of space to understand those 
who live in the fourth. It would be useless, therefore, to 
attempt to describe many things which, if people were in 
a position to apprehend them, would render such differences 
as now exist between them impossible. That neither the 
men of science nor the men of theology struggle to develop 
these more interior faculties, is entirely their own. fault, and 
I am afraid must, in some cases, be set down to the compla¬ 
cent self-satisfaction arising from a conviction on the part 
of both, that they know their own business too well to con¬ 
descend to take a limt from anybody. But a blind belief in 
the superficial senses is as unsafe a guide to truth, as a blind 
belief in a book : science is as mole-eyed as theology, and yet 
to one or the other the whole civilised world trusts for en¬ 
lightenment. No wonder that these two sets of blind guides, 
leading their blind followers, should stumble against each 
other in the dark, and fight furiously. The pity is, that one 
ray of light let in from the proper quarter would show that 
they were fighting over a shadow; but this ray each man 
must let in for himself, nobody can do it for him, and he must 
do it by getting rid of all his old preconceived notions and 
prejudices, and by opening the chambers of his affections, 
through incessant service for others, and arduous discipline 


86 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


and painful self-sacrifice. There is no royal road to the 
hidden knowledge which reveals the mystery of the action 
of the vital forces in nature. Each man must laboriously 
travel it alone ; but he reaps a rich reward as the light dawns- 
on his heretofore beclouded consciousness, and the problems 
which distracted it melt away before its heat, like ice under 
the rays of the sun. But the divine sun can alone perform 
this marvel, and it is only by inmost union with God that 
man can attain a perception of the wonders of divine science. 

Let us then assume as a hypothesis that the invisible world, 
with all the beings in it, as well as this one,—the two, in fact, 
forming a single universe,—is sustained and animated by a 
material force, which emanates from the Great Source of 
Life who pervades all things ; and that owing to a disturbance 
in that force—the nature of which will be alluded to later— 
its energies are displayed in a disorderly manner, and produce 
what we term physical disease and moral evil;—the question 
naturally arises in the minds of those who would fain see 
that force restored to its normal activities, How can this 
result be brought about ? and how can we contribute to bring 
it about ? Is there any process by which we can convert our 
organisms—each one of which is a battery of that force—into 
a distributing agent for a purer and more powerful current 
than any which now exist ? Manifestly only by approaching 
nearer to its source, and receiving it as unpolluted as possible 
by its passage through other impure organisms. The first ex¬ 
perience of which the man engaged in this attempt becomes 
conscious is, that he is the arena in which two strongly 
antagonistic currents come into collision, and that he is frus¬ 
trated in his attempt to open himself only to that which 
is pure, by a flood of that which is impure, seeking ingress 
by the opening which his efforts to receive a greater measure 
of the pure effected in his organism. If he doubted it before, 
he now becomes conscious that this invasion of the force he 
has roused, and which, though constantly prompting him to 
evil formerly, did so insidiously, and through a subtle action 
on what seemed to him his own initiative, is distinctly per¬ 
sonal and intelligent; in other words, he perceives that a 
malignant influence seeks to possess and dominate him, which 
he recognises to be outside of his own personality; while 


ANGELS AND DEMONS. 


87 


his perhaps unconscious cry for aid, in the heat of the combat 
is responded to by a beneficent influence which he also re¬ 
cognises as personal; in other words, no matter how scientific 
he may have been when he began his experiment, he will 
very soon, if he is persevering and sincere, come to recognise 
in one influence what in old parlance was called a “ guardian 
angel,” and in the other an infesting demon, and he will 
further learn that the degree in which he can attract the one 
and repel the other, depends upon the force of his will, and 
the promptitude with which he puts into operation his de¬ 
termination to obey the one and resist the other, at all cost 
and sacrifice. Thus he seeks, through constant and unremit¬ 
ting combat, to fit himself to become a medium for the trans¬ 
mission of the pure life-current, instead of being, as he was 
formerly, a medium of mixed and opposing currents. For 
it cannot be too strongly urged that we are all of us mediums 
of one kind or another, and that however much polluted the 
current may have become by the channels through which it 
passed before it reached us, it derived its origin in the first 
instance from God, and to stop the impulses of life which are 
thus projected into us, would be synonymous with cessation 
of life itself. This increases the difficulty, for it becomes a 
question of the transmutation, not of the expulsion, of the 
material force, the atoms of which, interlocked with our own, 
form the basis of all that is bad and impure, as well as of 
what is good, in our own moral nature. By the aid which 
we derive from our angelic allies we transmute and recom¬ 
bine these; but as^ome of them form part of the life of the 
infesting being, the latter is thus directly affected by this 
conversion of moral particles, and can only escape from the 
regenerating influence thus cast upon him, by a very power¬ 
ful exercise of will in the opposite direction, involving a 
painful dislocation of atoms. 

As a general rule, the earth-man who has fought the good 
fight, and vanquished his unseen enemies, has also the satis¬ 
faction of knowing that he has converted them, and that they 
pass, through his instrumentality, into the tutelage of those 
who have helped him to release them from the bondage to 
which they had been reduced by their own evil passions. It 
is thus that the visible reacts on the invisible, and that we 


88 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


are here unconsciously the guardian angels of those whose 
vices remained unsubdued in this life, but who can now be 
reached in a more effective manner than was formerly pos¬ 
sible ; because an angel can act far more powerfully on a 
disembodied organism through an embodied one, and by its 
assistance, where the atoms of the two are interlocked, than 
directly. This is borne out by the fact, well known to spirit¬ 
ualists, when “ eleinentals,” as they are termed by them, or 
unfortunate beings, usually of a very debased type, who are 
still chained to this earth magnetically, owing to the gross 
condition of their atomic particles, implore human beings to 
release them—a testimony I am aware that will not be re¬ 
garded as worth much by the world at large; but those who 
can realise that men here, influence most materially by their 
lives, the lives and conditions of those who have passed into 
another state of existence, must feel that it adds most seriously 
to their responsibilities; while it should operate as a powerful 
stimulant to them to rise into new and higher conditions in 
this world, than they have hitherto deemed possible. It 
should also be remarked that men suffer much, not only 
morally but physically, from these invasions; for the lower 
class. of infesting spirits obtain magnetic elements from 
human organisms by which they sustain their own, and 
urge them to vices which furnish them with the sustenance 
they desire. 

Thus the first impulse of a man who dies of drink, on 
reaching the other world, is to infest the organism of a 
drunkard here, and urge him to saturate himself with al¬ 
cohol, the essential quality of which he drains out of the sub¬ 
jected organism, thus intensifying the desire of the victim, 
to an uncontrollable degree, to satisfy a craving that can 
never be satisfied, till the external tissues of the organism 
are finally wasted. During his drunken bouts he becomes 
a medium, through whom his infesting demon often speaks 
and raves; while the latter foresees and shrinks from the 
prospect of the physical death of his victim, because he knows 
that it will involve a dislocation of atoms, which will convey 
the same sensation of decease as if he were himself passing 
through the death-agony. In like manner, a coquette, ac¬ 
customed to live on the admiration of men while in this 


INFESTATION. 


89 


world, no sooner passes from it than she seeks the form of a 
beautiful woman in which to take up her abode, and there 
nourish herself on the male elements which she draws from 
the homage rendered to her victim, whose love of admiration 
she excites to the utmost possible degree in order to obtain 
them. If the beauties of society, who live on the devotions 
paid to their attractions by the opposite sex, only knew that 
they were feeding sirens, by no means beautiful, all the time, 
they would be less vain of themselves, and more chary of 
their charms. These are truths which have been stated in 
a different form by Swedenborg and other seers; if I restate 
them here, I do so because I believe the majority of people to 
be ignorant of them, and because it is of the highest import¬ 
ance that they should know the truth. 

From this it is plain that what is generally termed “sin,” 
is, in fact, the outward and visible sign of infestation, and 
the expression “ forgiveness of sins,” so often used in the 
New Testament, means in reality, “ expulsion of infestation” 
—the word a(f>njfju having been wrongly rendered “ to for¬ 
give.” This reading will throw new light on many passages, 
the true import of which is now totally misapprehended. 

As in certain of the grossest organisms an affinity exists 
between the atomic particles of man, and those of the lower 
animal creation, suggesting vices of the most degrading de¬ 
scription, so those who exhibited this tendency in earth-life, 
now draw the magnetic elements they require from the bodies 
of animals, which they more or less inhabit. This occupation 
of the organisms, both of men and animals, by those in 
another state of existence, is the origin of the idea of metem¬ 
psychosis so prevalent in Eastern religions, while the intimate 
association of the atomic particles of this world and the 
other, forms a medium by which the memory of the invisible 
associates passes into those they haunt here, and results in 
what seem to them flashes of recollection of a former state 
of existence. This is the origin of the doctrine of reincar¬ 
nation. 

It is in the atomic constitution of the moral atmosphere 
by which a man surrounds himself by his own acts during 
life, that he creates for himself what the Buddhists call his 
Karma; and it is the interlocking of the atomic particles of 


90 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


parents with their offspring, during the process of procreation 
and parturition, which accounts for all the phenomena of 
heredity. The ancient science of astrology was based upon 
the same fact; for inasmuch as no atom of the universe is 
absolutely unaffected by the combinations of all the other 
atoms, but are ever presenting kaleidoscopic changes, by 
reason of which every minute particle occupies a different 
relation to all the other particles, and inasmuch as they are 
interlocked through all apparent space, visible and invisible,, 
the movements of the heavenly bodies, and their constantly 
changing relations to each other, cannot be without their in¬ 
fluence upon the atoms of this world, and of the human beings* 
who inhabit it. An illustration of this atomic connection, 
between the sun and the earth, occurs in the well-known fact 
that electrical disturbances and hurricanes are most numerous- 
during the years of the maximum of sun-spots. 

The power which the will-force exercises over the atoms of 
the constituent principles of the organism, has been already 
alluded to in the phenomena which have resulted from 
hypnotic experiments ; it is this will-force, concentrated under 
a specific influence, which constitutes what is known as 
“ faith ”—the potency of which is alluded to by Christ when 
He says that by it we can remove mountains, and the exer¬ 
cise of which was an indispensable preliminary to the cures 
which He wrought, deemed at the time miraculous. It is by 
means of the projection of this faith-force into nature, that 
some of the more remarkable instances of answers to prayer 
have been obtained; and it is by the combined operation of the 
atoms of the faith-force in the operator—provided that the 
magnetism is of the right quality—and of the patient, that 
those cures, of which a good deal has been heard lately, of 
healing by faith have been accomplished. The oriental mys¬ 
tics, who have from the most ancient times been conversant 
to some extent with the correlation of atoms and the laws 
which govern it, positively assert that they have succeeded in 
prolonging life to an extent quite incredible to the Western 
mind, and in modifying the conditions of death, though this has 
only been in rare instances, which I have not had any means of 
authenticating, but I see nothing impossible in it; and if it bo 
so, it would probably account for the fable of the “ Elixir of 


WILL-FORCE. 


91 


Life ”—the elixir being nothing more than the concentration, 
of the will, exercised in an almost superhuman degree for 
many years upon the one idea of prolonging existence, ac¬ 
companied by an absolute certainty on the part of the dev¬ 
otee that it would be prolonged; the effect of this fixed idea, 
backed by a fixed will, upon the atoms of the constituent 
principles of the man, being finally to bring them under a 
certain control, and so to regulate that constant mutation of 
them, which, it is well known to medical science, is accom¬ 
plished every few years in the outer human frame. This- 
involves a knowledge of the different principles of which 
man is composed, and which is placed by oriental science at 
seven. The question whether this is so or not, is too abstruse- 
to discuss here, the more especially as it has no practical 
bearing—length of days not being by any means an object 
worthy of ambition in itself. That the term of a man’s life 
will be prolonged if the atomic disorder, which now produces 
physical decay and moral evil, can be overcome, is certain ; 
but it is an incident in the great triumph of the race, not the 
triumph itself. 

The tremendous dynamic potency which is stored in the 
human will, when it is thus reinforced by the wills of beings 
who are unseen, is only just beginning to dawn upon Western 
science, which does not yet admit the invisible agency. It is- 
manifest that those who happen to be exceptionally endowed 
with this will-energy, should learn how to use it to the benefit,, 
and not to the injury of mankind ; and these especially should 
open themselves, by the moral discipline and ordeals to which 
I have alluded, to receive divine impression. This is espe¬ 
cially true of those engaged in healing the sick. Unless 
there is a strong internal impression that this power should 
be put forth for this purpose, faith or will cures are not in the 
divine order; for a healing power can be put through a well- 
intentioned human instrument by malevolent influences, and 
a life may thus be prolonged to its own serious injury. This 
does not imply that medical remedies should not in all cases, 
of illness be resorted to, because the malevolent influences on 
them can always be counteracted by beneficent influences;, 
but where the human will comes into play for selfish pur* 
poses, an entirely new set of atomic combinations are intro- 


D2 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


•duced, which resist the operation of those wills in the unseen 
which are acting under divine impulse. 

We are thus furnished with the key to many problems 
which have hitherto been deemed insolvable, the value of 
which, unfortunately, can only be appreciated by those whose 
faculties are to some extent internally developed. As, how- 
over, the system of the visible and invisible worlds forms 
one indivisible whole, pervaded throughout by the same 
material forces, in infinite permutations and combinations, 
and as every unit in it is inseparably bound with every other 
unit in it, it is evident that no one, whether a human being 
or an angel—and by this latter term I mean only those who 
-at some epoch of our planet’s history have inhabited it—can 
reach a state where they are unaffected by the suffering con¬ 
sequent upon the debased moral condition which reigns both 
here and in the unseen world. Nor is it possible for them 
to receive divine life without giving it forth to those who 
need it. 

This is the first and fundamental law of life, that it cannot 
be passive: it is, in fact, “ matter in motion.” In like manner 
the evil ones are perpetually giving out the life which they 
have polluted, and which is so poisoned that it carries with 
it the seeds of death. The human recipients of these op¬ 
posite qualities of life cannot help magnetically imparting 
them to others. Hence we feel the presence of one person 
vivifying, and of another exhausting. Those who come into 
-atomic relations of a deeper kind—induced, for instance, by 
intense sympathy of labour for a common divine end—become 
incredibly sensible to the interchange of atomic particles, 
charged either with sympathy, or, in the case of an evil in¬ 
fluence invading too powerfully, with antipathy. The result 
is not merely moral, but actual physical suffering. To such 
an extent is this sometimes the case, that the moral defects 
of others with whom one is in this close relation, are each 
characterised by a different physical sensation, so marked 
that it is possible to tell by the sensation from whom the 
magnetism is projected, even though the person may be dis¬ 
tant. Under such circumstances, the thought of the person 
increases the pain, which is also caused by the projection of 
thought by the person. Hence circumstances often arise 


MORAL SYMPATHY OR ANTIPATHY. 


9a 


when two persons may be strongly attached to each other,, 
but when, owing to their respective magnetic conditions, it is- 
not possible for them to live together without severe suffering 
to both. 

These are facts which cannot be denied,—at all events- 
their denial can only be the result of ignorance, and cannot 
render them the less true. I have lived with many others in 
this internal relation, the sensitive condition being more or 
less developed in all of us ; thus, for instance, I had a dear 
friend who had naturally a violent temper, which, nevertheless, 
he succeeded in keeping under control, but however he might 
conceal the impulse to anger, I was always instantly aware of 
its existence by a pain in my face. I have felt shooting pain& 
in the head or chest, and many other sensations, all indicating 
certain moral conditions in others, while they were equally 
sensitive to moral changes in me. in fact we acted as moral 
barometers to each other. It wns possible to modify these 
conditions by varied groupings of the individuals, so that the 
magnetisms of one should neutralise those of the other; 
magnetism was employed to a large extent amongst us, 
and many devices resorted to, often involving great suffer¬ 
ing and discomfort, to induce harmonic action between the 
conflicting currents from above and below, to which we were 
especially open. In a word, the experiences which I then un¬ 
derwent, resulted often in phenomena which would be deemed 
incredible, and to which it is, therefore, not necessary to 
allude here. 

I gathered from the criticisms which appeared on a novel 1 
which I published not long since, in which I endeavoured 
to describe the organic effects which might thus be induced by 
moral sympathy or antipathy, how completely in the dark 
the general public still is in regard to this whole class of 
subjects. 

These things being so, and the angelic ministrants being 
in the constant radiation of their affections to those they 
desire to serve, it is plain that they can only reach them 
by a contact of atoms which produces suffering,—suffering, 
it is true, which contains within it a boundless peace and 
happiness. Indeed the capacities of the good for joy, and 

1 Masollam : A Problem of the Period. W. Blackwood & Sons. 


D4 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


of the bad for suffering, are infinitely beyond anything we 
ean conceive here, owing to the presence of that gross material 
husk which we call our bodies, and which deadens emotional 
sensation in either direction. But the idea that we can reach 
a condition in which we can individually free ourselves from 
the great human disease is utterly vain; if one member of 
the universal body suffers, all the members must suffer with 
it; and the great mistake which Buddha made, was in thinking 
that any amount of bodily mortification, or abstract contempla¬ 
tion, could emancipate him from the common lot of all man¬ 
kind. At the same time, his instinct that rest could only be 
found by penetrating the surface of physical and material 
life, was a sound one, but it was the rest of torpor. 

In the first reaction from the inversions which we find in 
nature, there is in humanity a disposition to cast away its 
idol, or crush it as an unworthy or useless thing beneath its 
feet. But when divine science and experience can prove that 
no being, whether in this world or the other, can exist without 
--a body, or be reverenced except through contact with its 
•outward as well as its inward forms, and that nature herself 
is a reflex, although a broken one, of all that is most divine, 
we must return to an elevated worship of nature, if we 
would drink at one of the purest springs of inspiration. 

There are three modes by which divine life and inspiration 
.are continually acting, upon us. They relate to our union 
with God, with man, and with nature. From the deep inmost 
of our spirit there penetrates to outer consciousness the far- 
sounding but distinctly audible echo of the voice which 
proclaims the eternal inner union between the Creator and 
the created. From man and from our loving fellowship with 
him, and service for him, come to us the love-gifts which 
we both impart and receive. From nature, when we, with 
the labour of our own hands, the energy of our wills, and the 
exercise of our faculties, redistribute and reorganise the dis¬ 
located atoms, there returns to us a vibration of harmonic 
motion in the magnetic currents which react upon our frames, 
and bring God down through us to the soil of outer things, 
placed in our own especial charge; the whole forming a 
grand inspiring trinity of Wisdom, Love, and Operation. 

Of these three modes, Buddha, and the religious teachers 


LIFE-RECEIVERS AND LIFE-GIVERS. 


95 


•who preceded him, sought only the first. There was an in¬ 
tense desire for union with God, and an earnest longing for 
absorption into Him, accompanied by a moral code inculcat¬ 
ing a pure and noble system of ethics; but it was only as a 
means to this personal end: their teaching took no cogni¬ 
sance of the atomic chain which binds man and nature into 
one inseverable whole, and its application to the human need 
.has been, in consequence, absolutely barren of results. 

It is only through the radiation of our affections upon man, 
and of our energies upon nature, that we can aid in the 
regeneration of the one, and in the reconstruction of the 
other, and so by co-operating with the divine purpose, find 
that inner union with God which the ancient teachers so 
evidently yearned after; and to do this effectively, we must 
realise the power which the affections can exercise, through 
the magnetic currents, of sympathy over man, and that the 
will can exercise, through the intellect, over nature; for in 
the human will and rational faculty reside those potential 
atoms, which are derived from the infinite creative potency, 
.and which enable man to fashion, and to some extent con¬ 
trol, the material nature by which he is surrounded. In the 
degree in which we open ourselves to the channels of the 
•divine love, and of the creative life, will man and nature 
respond to our touch, and shall we be partakers of the joy 
which is inseparable from that love, and that life. There is 
in reality no such thing as passivity towards God: we must 
move towards Him, or we in effect close the avenue of His 
approach; and we can only move thus towards Him in the 
degree that we realise that every faculty of our being is gen¬ 
erative and reproductive, and that our capacity of receiving 
divine f cncy is conditioned upon our promptitude in im¬ 
parting it. We are life-receivers, because we are life-givers. 
Stagnation is as impossible in us as it is in the atoms of which 
we are composed: we are all “ matter in motion,” moving up¬ 
wards or downwards in the great whirl of cause and effect, 
with a velocity which would startle us if we could watch our 
progress, as those can who are themselves hidden from our 
gaze. 

If, then, as I have endeavoured to show, the most divine 
inspiration issues from the threefold fountain of Wisdom, 


96 v SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 

Love, and Operation, whose life-giving currents should im¬ 
pregnate human thought, sympathy, and deed, and will retain 
their purity just in the degree in which the receptacles 
which receive them are free from taint, it follows that the 
diversion of them into devious channels, their pollution, and 
their obstruction, must be attended with the most untoward 
consequences to the human race. Nevertheless these three 
currents are invariably so diverted, polluted, and obstructed, 
and this is due to the pride, the selfishness, and the apathy of 
man. 

Firstly, the current of the divine wisdom is diverted by 
man into devious channels by his pride, when he creates his 
God after his own image, and attributes to Him the qualities 
of anger, jealousy, cruelty, injustice, and revenge. Such a 
God is the God of the Old Testament: “ Thou thoughtest,’ r 
says the Psalmist, “ that I was altogether such an one as thy¬ 
self.” Nor is His nature much modified in the New, out of 
which a scheme for the salvation of man has been constructed 
by human invention, as opposed to the spirit of the divinely 
inspired life of the pure Being whose teaching it records, as it 
must be revolting to all who have ever felt, however faintly, 
the ineffable touch of the Great All Father and All Mother, 
thrilling the inner sense by contact with the Word made 
flesh. Doctrines which are alike insulting to the Almighty, 
and dishonouring to Him whose mission it was to impart to 
man a new and higher conception of the Deity — however 
earnestly and devoutly held—form one of the most potent 
barriers to the descent of an inspiration by divine wisdom \ 
for it renders impossible that inner union with God, through 
Christ, who is its channel; and this union can only be ob¬ 
tained by a true conception of the relations which God, the 
Saviour, and man, bear to each other; to which I shall refer 
hereafter. 

In default of a pure conception of the attributes of the 
Deity, man can no more be a reflex of the divine wisdom, 
however faint, than the rays of the sun can be reflected from 
the surface of a slough of mud. 

Secondly, the inspiration of divine love is polluted by man's 
selfishness, when it paralyses his activities in the service 
of his fellows. When this current of the divine affections 


THE STRUGGLE FOR HUMANITY. 


97 


> 

pours into a man who is cold, and hard, and cruel, and self- 
seeking, its atoms are transformed into the atoms of which 
the selfish instincts are composed, and become potent for 
hate, just as they would have been powerful for love, were 
the large capacity which he has for loving himself, converted 
into one for loving his neighbours. 

But even those who desire most earnestly to receive this 
love-current in its purity, and to crush out all selfish instincts 
which may impede their free and absolute devotion to their 
fellows, find that the effort is one which taxes all their powers 
of endurance; for we often meet with the most determined 
resistance from those whom we are called upon to serve, in 
whom coldness finally gives place to ingratitude, and passive 
opposition is succeeded by active persecution. Unless under 
these trials we are able to stand firm and to endure, all the 
concessions we make, and the weakness we show, pollute the 
love-current, until our usefulness is finally destroyed. If, on 
the other hand, we maintain our attitude of forbearance and 
tenderness, the love-currents store themselves till the requisite 
force has accumulated, until at last, by the outpouring of its 
energies, the enemies’ citadel is stormed, and the victory, 
which seemed hopeless, is finally won. 

But the combatant thus fighting for humanity against 
the forces which obsess it, must be prepared for apparent 
defeat. The nobler the cause, the more heroic and self- 
sacrificing the character of those to whom it is intrusted, the 
greater is the risk and probability of their becoming the 
victims and martyrsf to the world’s unwillingness, and unreadi¬ 
ness to respond to these inspirations. It must too often be 
the destiny of such, not only to suffer constantly from the 
necessary suppression of the stores of life they would other¬ 
wise receive and impart, but to pass through inward if not 
outward martyrdom, in the painful doubt whether it may not 
have been due to some shortcoming of their own, that they 
fail to see as yet the accomplishment of their purest and 
highest aspirations. It was under such an agony that the 
highest teacher and profoundest lover of humanity, passed 
from earth with the despairing cry, " My God! my God! why 
hast Thou forsaken me ? ” 

Thirdly, the inspiration of the divine operation is ob- 
G 


98 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


structed by the apathy of man, when he does not put physical 
energy forth into the external nature by which he is sur¬ 
rounded. He must organise the atoms of his material environ¬ 
ment, so that they may correspond with the atoms of the 
other two currents, if he would effect a perfect synthesis of 
the three, and this can only be done by a certain amount of 
physical energy. 

The man who seeks the highest inspiration, and who ne¬ 
glects this important factor in it, may receive an impulse 
of a very high and pure quality, but it will lack the essen¬ 
tial element of the practical. He may form a far higher 
and truer conception of God than other men, he may exercise 
an abundant charity, and feel a tender sympathy for his 
fellows; but his life will be relatively barren of results, 
because he will have organised nothing. He will not have 
added a stone to the foundation of that new society which 
we are labouring to reconstruct: he cannot form part of a 
home thus engaged, because on the one point of daily labour 
in details as an act of worship, he will be out of sympathy, 
and the current of operation being obstructed in him, it will 
be obstructed in all; for the magnetism of apathy which will 
radiate from him will paralyse the atoms of energy in the 
organisms of the others, and a sense of discomfort will ensue, 
which will render companionship impossible. Though exter¬ 
nal harmony may be preserved, the sense will become general 
that progress is hopeless with such an influence permanently 
active, and his absence will be necessarily but reluctantly 
enforced. 

For the measure of inspiration is enormously increased 
by the number of those engaged in seeking it in one group, 
and in the same way, and whose atoms have combined in 
such a manner as to form one wire, so to speak, which 
may transmit from the unseen, the electric inspirational cur¬ 
rent. The result then becomes the inspiration, not of any one 
of the number—though upon him may devolve the duty of 
putting it into words—but of the group. 

Thus I am conscious, while writing this, of receiving inter¬ 
nal assistance from others with whom I am in special atomic 
rapport for the purpose. In proportion as the group increases, 
does the value and trustworthiness of the inspiration increase, 


GROUPS AND THEIR FUNCTIONS. 


99 


as there is less chance of its being charged with the per¬ 
sonality of the writer; while in the event of a statement 
being made out of harmony with the general current of the 
inspiration, it would be checked. 

In order to ensure a wholesome and effective co-operation 
in all the details which make for divine progress, it is neces¬ 
sary that all those engaged in the same effort—especially if 
they are living together, and their magnetic interchange is 
constant and active—should put forth the utmost energy of 
which they are severally capable. It is as tnough a group 
of persons all attached together, were swimming against the 
current of a powerful stream: any slackness on the part of 
one, impedes the progress of all the others; nor is it possible 
for any one to strike off in a direction of his own, without 
rendering an immediate severance necessary of the cord 
which attaches him to all the others. On the other hand, 
the more numerous the group engaged, the more easy in 
some ways does it become to attach new members to it, though 
few who desire to be thus attached, have any idea, till they 
try, of the tremendous struggle in store for them in the foam¬ 
ing torrent into which they are about to be launched; while 
those who thus take on an extra charge, know full well 
from experience the extra risk which is thus incurred, and 
the more arduous effort which it will involve. 

They also know—and this is perhaps the hardest lesson 
of all to learn—how slow and toilsome the progress is, how 
little there is to show for all the sufferings borne and labour 
accomplished, what faith and patience are required, and how 
immeasurable the distance between the real that they are 
grappling with, and the glorious ideal dimly showing in 
the glow of the far-distant horizon. But in spite of it all 
they have had their victories ; and when the stress is hardest 
it is wise to look back on these for encouragement, as songs 
of joy and triumph bring strength and support along a way 
beset with pain and sorrow and disappointments, which, when 
seen in their true proportions, are only as faint and fading 
specks showing in a universe of infinite light. 

It is when the earnest and awakened man, who has become 
thoroughly alive to the truth of the foregoing observations, 
has entered with unflinching determination and set purpose 


100 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


of will upon the apparently hopeless task of making himself, 
in conjunction with others, a radiative centre for the recrea¬ 
tive life-current into nature and into man, that he becomes 
aware of the painful effect that it produces on his own 
organism. He has, as it were, placed himself directly under 
the concentrated ray of the Divine Sun; and, tempered 
though it be by its passage through the appropriate inter¬ 
mediate channels, its ardours are to many wellnigh insupport¬ 
able. This is not so in every case; it depends largely on 
organic conditions and previous experiences. Some may have 
been long gradually and unconsciously, and through much 
suffering, approaching the burning bush; while others, sud¬ 
denly awakened, as it were by an electric shock, from the 
life of coldness and indifference in which they had been 
steeped, are almost immediately forced into sharp suffering. 
But this very fact is the strongest evidence they could desire 
of the reality of the effort in which they are engaged, and of 
the truth on which it is based. And herein does it differ 
from every other religious impulse which has since crystal¬ 
lised into a Church or a sect. It involves the profession 
of no creed, the observance of no ceremony, the celebration 
of no rites, the construction of no dogma; it relies upon no 
evidence, on nothing that has been written in this book, 
but on the individual experience of every man or woman 
who is ready, on the assumption of the possibility of what is 
here stated being true as a hypothesis, to take the great risk, 
and undergo the great sacrifices which it involves, of making 
the experiment, on the chance that it may be true; and it 
differs from all existing religious corporations, sects, ecclesi- 
asticisms, in this, that it cannot possibly become a formalism, 
inasmuch as it demands no profession of faith, and is not 
possible to be held as a theory. It is either the life itself, 
with all the daily acts of sacrifice and service that it involves, 
or it is nothing. These acts and this self-sacrifice are as 
much within reach of the peasant as of the duke, who, if 
they are equally whole-hearted and sincere, will very soon 
find themselves working side by side; for between the top and 
the bottom of society, there is an immense reorganisation and 
redistribution of atoms necessary; and it will reach the ex¬ 
tremes—as it has already done to some extent—not so much 


NEW RELIGIOUS IMPULSE. 


101 


through written or spoken elaboration of the matter I have 
here endeavoured to set forth, as through internal prepara¬ 
tion, which will render one here and one there sensible to . 
the magnetic influence of those who have already begun to 
radiate this life, and who will thus be drawn to it often 
almost in spite of themselves. But inasmuch as they will 
very soon find their own efforts powerless to enable them 
to realise the expectations here held out, and become con¬ 
scious of a feebleness of will, and a physical, as well as a 
moral incapacity to fight successfully against those powers of 
darkness to which I have already alluded, and who will con¬ 
centrate all their infernal enginery upon the aspirant feebly 
struggling to evolve his dormant faculties, and rise into new 
and higher conditions, a divine potency, hitherto latent in 
nature, has been developing during these latter years, to 
which allusion is made in the first chapter, and without 
which the stupendous task of the regeneration of man and of 
nature, through the instrumentality of man, would be utterly 
hopeless. 

I will presently endeavour to describe what this potency 
is; how the world has been prepared to receive it; how it has 
been dimly foreshadowed in the sacred books of all religions, 
of which it is the fulfilment; and how at the moment when 
society is most threatened with revolution by explosive ele¬ 
ments from below, it will descend from above with a counter¬ 
energy of construction, even more powerful, to enable man 
to rear a new and perfected social fabric upon the dtbris of 
the one which it^own vices had laid low. 

Before, however, entering upon this subject, it will be 
necessary to expose the weakness of all social and ecclesi¬ 
astical institutions, and the dangers which threaten them, in 
consequence of the vices inherent in their operation and 
constitution. 


102 


CHAPTER VI. 


HISTORY OP THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH, A RECORD OF SWIFT DE¬ 
MORALISATION ; PARTLY OWING TO DESIRE TO MAKE CONVERTS, AND 
PARTLY TO THE SUBSTITUTION OF A FUTURE LIFE FOR PRESENT 
PRACTICE—CONFLICT BETWEEN ROME AND THE EAST—EXTINCTION 
OF GNOSTIC SECTS DESTRUCTIVE OF MUCH OF THE DEEPER TRUTH— 
COMPILATION OF THE PRESENT CANON OF SCRIPTURE UNTRUST¬ 
WORTHY—APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS AND EPISTLES—“ THE TEACHING OF 
THE TWELVE APOSTLES”—THE BOOK OF ENOCH—THE CHURCH OF 
ENGLAND ON THE VERGE OF A GREAT MORAL REVOLUTION — THE 
CONFESSIONS OF A PARISH PRIEST—NEED OF A REFORMED CHRIS¬ 
TIANITY. 

An examination into the history of all existing religions will 
show us, either that the prophet or teacher himself adapted 
his morality to the conditions of the people he taught, as 
in the case of Moses and Mohammed—or that, if the teaching 
was too elevated for the masses, as in the case of Christ, and 
in a minor degree of Buddha, it was very soon reduced to 
their level by their followers. 

The first instinct of the disciple is to deify the master; the 
second, to make concessions in order to gain converts. It 
never seems to have occurred to the disciples of those who 
enunciated the highest doctrine, that the ethics which it con¬ 
tained, should form the foundation upon which a new society 
should be reared, in which the moral standard thus suggested 
should be practicable. The desire of making converts in¬ 
variably supersedes every other consideration. The history 
of the early Christian Church is a lamentable record of swift 
demoralisation, largely owing to this cause. In the aban¬ 
donment of the practice of having all things in common, in 
the disputes which arose between the disciples, in the sup¬ 
pression of the writings which were deemed authoritative 


QUARRELS AMONG THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 103 


by the most spiritual and enlightened portion of the early 
Church, and the struggle between the worldly element—which 
founded a Church in the most dissolute capital in Europe, by 
reason of the concessions it made to the social conditions 
which prevailed in it—and the Gnostic sects, which, until 
extinguished, retained hold of the spiritual life which had 
been preserved in the Church of the brethren in Jerusalem, 
presided over by James, the brother of Christ,—we have the 
story of a spiritual fiasco unparalleled in the history of 
religious movements. No sooner was the great Personality 
removed from the midst of His followers, than those who 
had asked which should sit upon His right hand in heaven, 
began to struggle for the highest place here, and jealousies, 
rivalries, and bitternesses envenomed the infant communities , 1 
which were finally to give birth to the ecclesiastical mon¬ 
strosities represented at this day at Jerusalem in the differ¬ 
ent angles of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where, on 
the occasion of sacred Christian festivals, the worshippers 
over the tomb of the Lord of love, are only kept from Hying 
at each other’s throats by a strong guard of Moslem soldiery. 
The fact that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is not over 
the tomb of Christ is a lie the more, but the desecration of 
His memory is none the less on that account. It has been 
reserved for the most sacred city in the world to represent 
the most degrading spectacle of human ignorance, supersti¬ 
tion, and hypocrisy which exists anywhere in the nineteenth 
century; as it was reserved for those who call themselves tho 
vicegerents of Christ on earth, to rival the wickedest sover¬ 
eigns of their time in lust, cruelty, and the worst vices of the 
dark ages. These are they to whom Christ referred when 
He said, “ Beware of false prophets, which come unto you in 

< sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. By 

< their fruits ye shall know them.” 

Modern research is now happily enabling us to estimate at 
their true value the books which form what is called “the 

1 In illustration of this, see the first chapter of the 1st Epistle of Clement 
to the Corinthians, in which he denounces “ that wicked and detestable sedi- 

< ti on> so unbecoming in the elect of God, which a few headstrong and self- 
* willed men have fomented to such a degree of madness, that your venerable 

< an d renowned name, so worthy of all men to be beloved, is greatly blas- 
‘ phemed thereby.” 


104 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


canon of Scripture.” We find that, so far as the New Testa¬ 
ment is concerned, it is not possible to disconnect it from the 
bitter feud which originated in the divergent views of Peter 
and Paul, and their violent hostility towards each other. 

While the Christian Church at Pella, where it was estab¬ 
lished after the destruction of Jerusalem, retained to some 
extent the pure spirit of the teaching of Christ, its rival at 
Rome was adapting itself to its worldly surroundings, and 
had already inaugurated that policy of compromise and dupli¬ 
city which soon enabled it to claim a universal supremacy. 
Meantime at Alexandria, and throughout most of the Eastern 
Churches, the internal sense was clung to, and they were thus 
enabled to invoke—as such of their writings as have been 
preserved, show—a far purer and truer inspiration. It was, 
in fact, a war at last between the spirit and the letter, be¬ 
tween the East and the West; and it is scarcely to be won¬ 
dered at that the inspirations which animated the former 
should have been the purest, when we consider the corrupt 
social and political conditions under which the Church of 
Rome had struggled into life, as compared with the purer 
influences which surrounded the Gnostic communities and 
the Ethnico Christians. The quarrel culminated in what was 
known as the Marcion heresy, towards the end of the second 
century, and the canon of Scripture clearly bears on its record 
the traces of the struggle which terminated in the triumph of 
Rome, and the suppression of all that militated against the 
doctrines it had espoused. Hence we find that the Gospels 
have been tampered with, especially Luke’s; that the Acts of 
the Apostles are an incorrect narrative of events, in which 
few traces of any lofty inspiration are to be found; and that 
interpolations have occurred in the various writings which 
were then collected to form the text-book of the religion, 
though even its compilers did not assert that they were in¬ 
fallibly inspired—that was a dogma that was not invented 
until many hundreds of years after. 

I am aware that this will be controverted, and the martyr¬ 
doms and persecutions of nearly four hundred years will be 
pointed to as an evidence of the staunchness of the early 
Christians in Rome to their principles. But men will die for 
what they believe to be fundamental dogmas of faith, while 


CANON OF SCRIPTURE. 


105 


they will yield for the sake of expediency, details which they 
consider of less importance, in the presence of an overwhelm¬ 
ing pressure. Our records of the history of the first four or 
five centuries after Christ are too meagre to enable us to 
assert that belief as well as practice did not undergo great 
changes during that period. Indeed we have every right to 
assume, from the controversies and disputations that we know 
occurred, that they did. Although it has now become neces¬ 
sary to consider the compilers of the canon of Scripture to 
have been as fully inspired as the books we owe to their selec¬ 
tion, their authority was not universally considered infallible 
at the time. Indeed, the divisions and scandals which took 
place among them, the numerous so-called heresies and sun¬ 
dry patristic discussions, fully justified scepticism on this 
point then, as it does still. 

Thus we have St Paul’s epistle to the Laodiceans, which, 
in his epistle to the Colossians, he expressly orders should be 
read in the Church, excluded from the canon of Scripture, 
with about twenty other books, which were deemed authori¬ 
tative during the first four centuries in the Christian Churches, 
among them the epistles of Barnabas, Clement, and Ignatius, 
which contain many passages full of an inspiration as pure 
and lofty as are to be found in the canonical epistles. 

When we investigate the constitution of the Council of 
Nice, convoked by the Emperor Constantine—himself not a 
Christian at the time, and a man of dissolute character— 
charged with the high function of providing Christendom with 
its Bible, we find that it was composed of 318 violent parti¬ 
sans, of whom Sabinus, the Bishop of Heraclea, affirms that, 
** excepting Constantine himself and Eusebius Pamphilus, 
they were a set of illiterate creatures that understood noth¬ 
ing ; ” but then he was of the opposite faction. They began 
by quarrelling among themselves, and libelling each other to 
the Emperor; but we learn from Mosheim’s ‘Ecclesiastical 
History * that the Emperor burnt all their libels, and exhorted 
them to peace and amity; while Pappus tells us in his Syno- 
dican to the Council, that the means employed for discovering 
what books should be selected as canonical, was promiscuously 
to put all the books referred to the Council for deliberation, 
under the Communion-table in a church, when they besought 


106 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


the Lord that the inspired writings might get on the table, 
while the spurious ones remained underneath, “ and that it 
happened accordingly.” 1 

Whatever may have been the method adopted to discover 
which books did, and which did not contain the mind of God, 
Archbishop Wake and other learned divines were not satisfied 
with it, and have translated all the rejected books into Eng¬ 
lish from the original, professing at the same time their be¬ 
lief in their inspiration. Meantime, that portion of Christen¬ 
dom which especially resents the pretensions of the Church 
of Rome, cling with the most intense tenacity to the infallible 
inspiration of the letter of the books thus selected for them 
400 years after Christ, out of a mass of sacred literature, by 
318 Roman Catholic bishops. 

It is remarkable that of the three writings, which are gen¬ 
erally supposed, and with reason, to have issued from the 
Church of Jerusalem, practically the first Christian Church, 
two have been excluded. These consist of the Epistle of St 
James, which Canon Spence says “possesses that indefinable 
‘ something —we call it inspiration—which distinguishes the 
‘ writings, included by the general voice of the Church in the 
‘ New Testament Scriptures, from all other writings in the 
‘ world.” 2 The other two are “ The Teaching of the Twelve 
Apostles,” and “ The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs,’” 
which all three dwell entirely on life and practice, and 
ignore the atonement and other dogmas. Many will feel 
the two last to contain more of the “ indefinable something ” 
called inspiration, than much that is written in the canonical 
Epistles, with some of which they are contemporaneous. 

How early corruptions and interpolations began, may be 
gathered from the 2d chapter of Ignatius’s Epistle to the 
Philadelphians, the 19th, 20th, and 21st verses, where he 
says: “Nevertheless I exhort you that you do nothing out 
‘ of strife, but according to the instruction of Christ, Because 
‘ I have heard some who say, unless I find it written in the 
‘ originals (or archives), I will not believe it to be written 
‘ in the Gospel. And when I said * It is written,’ they an- 
4 swered from what lay before them in their corrupted copies. 

1 Mace’s Com., N. 7, p. 875. 

2 The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, by Canon Spence, p. 99. 


CORRUPTIONS AND INTERPOLATIONS. 107 

‘ But to me Jesus Christ is instead of all the uncorrupted 
‘ monuments in the world; together with those undefiled 
‘ monuments, His cross and death and resurrection, and the 
* faith which is by Him, by which I desire through your 
‘ prayers to be justified.” If corrupted copies existed in the 
Church in the time of Ignatius, a contemporary of St John, 
whose epistles are mentioned by Origen, Irenaeus, Eusebius, 
Jerome, and others, what guarantee for their purity have we 
now ? What other test of the value of writings purporting 
to be inspired can exist beyond each man’s own inner con¬ 
sciousness ? And of what avail can intellectual effort be 
in this direction? As Jesus Christ was to Ignatius, “in¬ 
stead of all the uncorrupted monuments in the world,” so 
He must ever be to those who have found Him. 

When these facts become understood and realised, it is 
impossible that history or prejudice can cling much longer to 
this compilation as an infallible guide to spiritual truth, ex¬ 
cepting where that truth is confirmed by the spiritual insight 
which it is in each man’s power to obtain for himself; he 
will then feel more than ever its transcendent value, and 
rejecting the dross, which, after all, is but a small proportion 
of the whole, rejoice in the evidence which its main body 
of testimony affords in its more interior sense, to the truths 
which have been personally revealed to him, but which take 
a totally different aspect from those which the Church has 
constructed out of the dross, or the external letter, as dogmas. 

A better illustration of the lukewarmness of the Church in 
its search after divine truth, cannot be afforded than in the 
history of the Book of Enoch. This book is quoted by Jude: 
it was accepted as divine authority by many of the fathers of 
the Christian Church, and seems to have been in existence 
until about the year 800 a.d., when it is quoted at length 
by the Byzantine chronicler, George Syncellus. Then it dis¬ 
appears until 1773, when Bruce discovered it in Abyssinia 
and brought three manuscripts of it to Europe. It was. 
translated into English by Laurence, but few have ever heard 
of it, and it would be considered as great a sacrilege to bind 
it up as an inspired book in the Old Testament, as to expunge- 
Jude as an inspired book from the New, and yet it is evident 
that either one or other should be done. In the fourteenth 


108 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


verse of his epistle, Jude says, “ And Enoch also, the seventh 

* from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord 

* cometh with ten thousand of His saints, to execute judgment 

* upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them 

* of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly com- 

* mitted, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners 

* have spoken against Him.” How it is very important to 
know the end of this prophecy, and it is surely the business 
•of the Church to afford the earnest inquirer in search of truth, 
the facility of finding it in the Bible, instead of having to go 
for it to the British Museum. Otherwise Jude should be 
expunged from the Hew Testament as uninspired and mis¬ 
leading. I do not offer any opinion as to the authorship of 
the Book of Enoch, excepting in so far that it was certainly 
not written by Enoch, any more than the Pentateuch was 
written by Moses, or the Psalms, with very few exceptions, 
by David, or all Isaiah by Isaiah, or Daniel by Daniel; but 
it contains, nevertheless, inspired truth of the deepest import 
to humanity, in regard to which I shall have more to say 
presently. 

Meantime men will not be contented with this lukewarm¬ 
ness on the part of their spiritual pastors or guides, and the 
mutterings of the coming storm are already beginning to be 
heard within the pale of the Church itself. 

As men are conscientiously and impartially examining the 
history of the birth and infancy of the Christian Church, 
•and as new documents are discovered which throw new 
light upon it, those among them who are honest, whether in 
the Church or out of it, are compelled to abandon the conten¬ 
tion that the dogmas it most relies upon have a divine origin, 
and to seek for some new basis for their theological super¬ 
structure. Thus the Hon. and Eev. Canon Fremantle re¬ 
marks, in a striking article recently published, “The early 

< history of the Church has likewise been subjected to a minute 

* criticism, which has been stimulated of late by the discovery 

< of ‘ The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.’ The result has 
‘ been to give us a simpler view of the organisation of the 

< Christian societies, and of their life and thoughts, to show 

* the influence of various social circumstances working nat- 

< urally upon them, and forming their institutions and their 


APPROACHING MORAL REVOLUTION. 10{> 

‘ theology. It becomes less and less possible to attribute to 
‘ the earliest period of the Church, as having been formally 
‘ imposed, or exclusively admitted, any of the theories of 
‘ Church government which we now know, whether Episcopal* 

* Presbyterian, or Independent, or the formed doctrines of 

* later times, whether relating to the plan of redemption, or 

* to the incarnation, or the Trinity.” 1 

It must, I think, be admitted, that when Anglican clergy¬ 
men are permitted by their Church to publish their readiness- 
to give up these cardinal doctrines, that Church itself must 
be on the verge of a great moral revolution. It has never 
been by the operation of the Spirit of God which was in the- 
Church, that men—outraged by its profanities or its apathy 
—from time to time struggled to reform it, but by the Spirit 
of God working in them in spite of the Church; and this* 
Spirit is at the present day more active than ever, and will* 
before long, accomplish the sacred work of its entire trans¬ 
formation. At the same time, I am willing to admit that 
even in its most corrupt form it has had its use, as the Levit- 
ical law had its use to those to whom it was given; but the- 
religious instinct of man has outgrown its dogmas, and, re¬ 
volted by its superstitions, demands a new departure. It 
would be in the highest degree ungrateful to deny that wo- 
owe this tendency to self-emancipation from the thraldom of 
priestcraft, in a large measure to science, and to the material¬ 
istic tendency of the day. If superstition is the bane, old- 
fashioned materialism^ is the antidote; they are both poisons,, 
but they have a tendency to neutralise each other. 

That the Church of England, though preserved from many 
of the more glaring vices of the Roman and Eastern Christian 
Churches, fails altogether to satisfy the consciences of a large 
class of those who nominally belong to it, must be generally 
admitted, and this uneasiness of spirit is not confined to the 
laity only. I will here introduce a document with which 
I have been favoured by a clergyman of the Established 
Church, and which, I am assured, is not without its echo in 
the breast of many of the clergy in England. 

1 Fortnightly Review, March 1887. “ The New Reformation : Theology 

under its Changed Conditions.” 


110 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


The Confessions of a Parish Priest. 

“ In my training for the priesthood, I was taught to accept 
implicitly all that is inculcated by the Church, without question 
or demur; and I was warned of the awful danger of schism and 
heresy which might happen to me, if I ventured to indulge in any 
private opinion, or, as it was called, free-thought, on the subject of 
religion. 

“ I was told that what the Church taught was identical with 
what Christ taught; that the doctrines of the Church were all 
derived from Him; that the outward government of the Church, 
and administration of the Church’s offices, were all modelled on 
a plan laid down by Him ; and, above all, that the whole Bible 
was directly inspired by God, or, as it were, written by God, 
using as a pen the human agent whose name is connected with 
the authorship of each book. I was told that I must hold and 
teach that salvation is to be found entirely, and found alone, in 
the Church, its ordinances, sacraments, functions, and devotions; 
and that all outside the pale of the Church, however pure and 
noble their daily lives and conduct, were in a hopeless miserable 
state of darkness and death, included under the category of unbe¬ 
lievers. 

“ So for several years I believed and taught; or rather I taught, 
and flattered myself that I believed. But by degrees some serious- 
considerations forced themselves upon my mind, and set me think¬ 
ing for myself. 

“ I. The first thing that I remarked was that all my preaching, 
all the services of my Church, all my religious functions and sacra¬ 
ments, had very little, or rather no, practical effect on the daily life 
and conduct, either of myself or of those to whom I ministered. 

“ I could not help feeling that salvation, if it was worth the 
name at all, must mean a transformation of daily life; and that if 
salvation were really the result of Church doctrine, ritual, and 
function, it would show itself in the disappearance from the 
Church’s members of evil passions, worldly ambitions, lusts, 
envies, and all sinful thoughts, words, and actions—and the sub¬ 
stitution for them of whatsoever is pure, holy, and of good report. 
That this was not the result of the Church’s influence was very 
apparent, both in my own individual case, and in the case of 
all with whom I had to do. 

“ I tried to discover the point of weakness. I found in self- 
examination very many causes of failure, clearly to be attributed 
to my own lack of steadfastness of life, earnestness, diligence, care, 
and purity of intention and purpose; and these faults I tried' hard 
to correct, with more or less success. 

“ But this was not sufficient to account for all the utter failures. 


THE CONFESSIONS OF A PARISH PRIEST. Ill 


As I looked around on other parishes, I found it everywhere the 
same. Professing Churchmen were no better than those who be¬ 
longed to other Christian sects—nor these in their turn than those 
who professed no religion at all, so far as their daily conduct, 
and the principles which guided their words and actions were con¬ 
cerned ; and though there were to be found here and there bright 
and holy exceptions to the general rule, I found these exceptions 
also outside the Church, and was therefore forced to the conclusion 
that they were not the result of the work of the Church, but of 
some other independent cause. Eeligion and daily life were uni¬ 
versally regarded in practice, if not in words, as two distinct matters; 
worship and work were placed on entirely different planes; and, 
in short, so far as regenerating human lives on earth was con¬ 
cerned, Christianity— i.e., the Church’s influence—must be pro¬ 
nounced a total failure. 

“ I began to question whether mankind, in its daily life, was 
better now than it was before the existence of Christianity, or 
than it would have been if Christianity had not been actively at 
work for 1900 years. 

“ II. The realisation of this fact set me thinking deeper. What 
is the cause of this failure ? I asked myself. The answer came at 
once. Either what the Founder taught was wrong, or else His 
followers have departed from His teachings. This alternative I 
was obliged to face, painful and serious as the ordeal was. I read 
the life of Christ carefully as related in the Gospels; I studied 
His teaching, His principles of morality, His rules for daily conduct, 
and I saw that He at any rate had never been given a fair trial. 
What He taught was not taught by the Church; what He de¬ 
nounced was not denounced now; His rule of life was no one’s 
practical standard now; and the worst of it was, I could not see 
how to set about making it so, either for myself or others. 

“ I went to consult a bishop; but he lived in a rich and 
luxurious mansion, waited on by servants in livery, ‘ clothed in 
purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day ; ’ and 
at the very beginning of our interview I had to disobey the teach¬ 
ing of Christ by addressing him as ‘ Kabbi,’ ‘ my Lord.’ I turned 
instinctively away from consulting him on the matter most deeply 
affecting me, and spoke to him instead of some minor subject 
quite foreign to my original purpose; and as I did so there 
passed in review before me all the pomp, wealth, pride, ambition, 
and self-satisfaction of Christian popes, cardinals, abbots, bishops, 
and priests, and I shuddered as I thought that I was one of those 
apostate followers of the meek and lowly Jesus, who preached the 
doctrine of self-abasement, purity, and humiliation. 

«I unburdened my mind to some of my brethren, fellow-priests 
of the Church. I was met by them in various ways. Some I 


112 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


found who shared my disquiet feelings, and who were anxious to 
find a remedy if possible; but they did not see what to do. 
Others rather pooh-poohed the matter, as being of an unpleasant 
nature, calculated to disturb their equanimity and peace of mind— 
and these dwelt on the nature of unsettling faith; whilst others, again, 
sheltered themselves beneath the wing of the Church, and persuaded 
themselves that, notwithstanding outward appearances and inward 
misgivings to the contrary, it must be all right, because it was the 
practice of the Church. Lastly—and probably these were really 
the majority—there were those who did not dare to face the ques¬ 
tion, unconscious to themselves that they were living a perpetual 
lie, teaching what they did not believe in the depths of their souls, 
practising devotions, administering sacraments, and discharging 
functions, which, if honest in themselves, they would acknowledge 
to be as fruitless in remedying the human malady of sin and suf¬ 
fering as any fetich of the barbarian savage. Driven back upon 
myself and my own meditations, I resolved to try and get rid of all 
prejudice resulting from my education and training, and forget for 
the time that I belonged to any Church, or to any religious party, 
and from the standpoint of an unbiassed outsider, to examine the 
fundamental principles of the Christian faith, as it is held and 
taught by the Church of the present day. 

“ But this, again, I found that I could not do, until I had freed 
myself from the false position in which I was living. In my desire 
to keep up the position of a country parson, and owing to other 
causes to which I need not now refer, I had for several years been 
living beyond my income, and was heavily oppressed with debt. 
The burden of this debt had long weighed me down with the 
utmost anxiety and care, and, combined with my religious doubts 
and questionings, rendered my life almost intolerable to me. I 
did not at that time realise the actual wickedness of living beyond 
one’s means, or the dishonesty of being in debt beyond one’s power 
to discharge. My great aim was to keep up appearances, and to 
avoid bringing scandal on the Church, and I lived in a vague hope 
that sooner or later 1 should be in a position to pay all that I 
owed; nevertheless, though I did not realise the wickedness of 
my condition, I was fully alive to the unpleasantness of it, and 
the evil that would result from a crisis in my pecuniary affairs. 
Thus I was driven to adopt all kinds of schemes for tiding over 
my difficulties, and borrowed money from various friends without 
any reasonable prospect of paying them back. At the same time, 
as my living was a good one, and as my wife’s relations were well 
to do, I justified myself by imagining that * it would all come right ’ 
in the end. 

“ Thus distracted with worldly cares, and overwhelmed by re¬ 
ligious doubts, I existed rather than lived, striving to satisfy the 


THE CONFESSIONS OF A PARISH PRIEST. 


113 


voice of conscience by a zealous discharge of the functions of the 
Church. 

“During six years I preached 1800 sermons, and conducted 
special missions in numerous parishes all over England. My fame 
as a preacher became tolerably widespread ; yet all the time I 
felt myself to be a living hypocrite. I longed most earnestly to 
see my way out of my false position. I prayed fervently and 
frequently for divine guidance and help. I sought light in the 
sacraments of the Church; I studied the Bible ; I meditated and 
made resolutions without end;—and yet no practical benefit appa¬ 
rently ensued. 

“ At last, in the providence of God, I was aroused to the con¬ 
viction that a decisive step must be taken without further delay, 
be the cost to me what it might, and even though it seemed cer¬ 
tain to involve loss of home, position, and reputation. I therefore 
called my creditors together, and my living was placed under 
sequestration till all the debts which I owed should be discharged 
in full. I was then freed from the grinding distractions of care, and 
at the same time was enabled to seek the retirement which I needed 
for a candid and impartial inquiry into the truth of God. 

“ This blessed result I owed to a combination of circumstances 
which brought me into contact with one who pointed out to me 
the only course that I could pursue in honour to my neighbours, 
and in obedience to the dictates of my conscience. It was thus 
that Providence, in answer to my earnest longing, and at the 
moment of my sorest stress, opened the way to a retreat, far from 
the busy haunts of men, where the conditions were most favourable 
alike to the realisation of my highest aspirations, and to the develop¬ 
ment of those faculties which had been dormant during my ministry 
in the Church. The result has been what I can only describe as a 
personal revelation m^de to me by God, and as a living conscious¬ 
ness of a.union through Him with Christ, so intense as to furnish 
me with a daily and hourly guide to my conduct in life. In the 
degree in which I submit myself to this guidance, do I receive light 
upou those divine mysteries which contain the essence of the truth 
that I have so long and earnestly sought, and which hold out to me 
the hope of the possibility of realising that ideal which will literally 
coincide with the teaching of Christ.” 

It is certain that many most devout and earnest men only 
remain within the pale of the Church because they cannot 
see what is to be put in its place. In the degree in which 
they can discard prejudices, which are the results of the 
accidents of birth and education, and narrowly and impar¬ 
tially investigate the history of the canon of Scripture, and 

H 


114 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


of the spiritual chaos of conflicting thought and belief in 
which the existing Christian Churches had their origin, and 
in the degree in which they consider the full force and mean¬ 
ing of the word “ inspiration,” will their doubts increase as 
to the value of the authority to which they have hitherto 
yielded obedience, and will they dare to explore for them¬ 
selves regions beyond the limits of what is considered ortho¬ 
dox. As ecclesiastically all Churches or sects form an integral 
part of that system of enlightened selfishness, upon which 
the whole system of society—from which it is not possible 
for the Church to disentangle itself—is based, they are bound 
by the very exigencies of their office, to preach that doctrine 
of compromise which is the chief corner-stone of all Churches; 
for they are well aware that any attempt to preach social 
reform upon the lines of Christ’s moral teaching, literally 
applied and carried out to its logical consequences, would be 
to undermine the foundations of every existing ecclesiastical 
establishment, whatever its age, size, or form, and bury 
its hierarchy in its ruins. Therefore they are obliged to 
maintain that the moral teaching of Christ is not to be held 
literally, because it is utterly impracticable in society as at 
present constituted. 

It is not possible to turn the other cheek when one is 
smitten; it is not possible to give the man who asks for your 
coat your cloak also; it is not possible to take no thought 
for the morrow, or to expect men to act practically upon the 
principle that the love of money is the root of all evil. All 
these words must be understood in such a qualified way as 
to allow men to act in direct opposition to their literal sense 
—and, indeed, they can only act up to their spirit, to the 
very limited extent that the constitution of society permits. 
The only persons who cannot be blamed for holding this at¬ 
titude, whether in the Churches or out of them, are those_ 

and they are probably the majority—who hold it conscien¬ 
tiously ; but the minority, who do so as the result of a con¬ 
scious compromise with their highest convictions, will not be 
held irresponsible for thus violating their purest and divinest 
instincts, even though they may not see clearly what practical 
step to take themselves. It implies a distinct want of faith, 
if a man’s conscience clearly shows him that he is violating 


THE EVILS OF COMPROMISE. 


115 


it, not to obey the impulse it suggests at all hazards. God 
does not act thus directly upon the inmost essence of man’s 
nature, without having provided a satisfaction for the craving 
after truth, which the uneasiness thus engendered indicates. 
The conscience becomes restless when it desires to progress 
Godward; and to stifle it from fear of consequences, or lest 
some worse evil may befall by obeying it than by disobeying 
it, is not merely an act of weakness and of timidity, but it 
is a deliberate insult flung into the face of the Almighty. 

Those who, perceiving the glaring evils attached to the 
ecclesiastical system with which they are connected, are 
impelled by their conscience to believe that they can best 
remedy those evils by remaining within its pale, and working 
for its reform from within, are bound to follow that guidance; 
and may rest satisfied that in doing so they are carrying out 
the will of God, as certainly as others to whom a different 
message is conveyed by the same still small voice: both may 
be the voice of God, though the message to each may be dif¬ 
ferent—for abuses may be attacked from within as effectively 
as from without. But those who feel called to quit their 
present form of ministry, need not fear that another will not 
be provided for them, where each aspiration will be responded 
to by the inspiration appropriate to it, and every prayer for 
guidance be answered by the revelation of a duty, involving 
prompt and unhesitating performance. It is not the finding 
out what God desires to be done, which is difficult—it is the 
doing of it. If the .path is rugged and narrow and dangerous, 
and beset with snares and pitfalls, there is never any lack of 
light upon it to him who knows in what quarter to look for 
it: for the light of the world is shining more gloriously than 
ever to those who wait for its appearing; and there is again 
a star shining in the East, to guide wise men to the cradle of 
a new birth of divine life into the world. 

If the work to which such men find themselves called, is 
vast, it is eminently practical; for it consists, not in preaching 
against the views which they condemn, but in undermining 
them by means of the explosive energy of a spiritual dyna¬ 
mite, which will soon be recognised as a new and irresistible 
force in the world, and which will work its own social revo¬ 
lution ; and this it will do at the critical juncture when the 


116 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


elements of socialism have culminated, and the triumph of 
anarchy seems to its promoters to be assured; for the flood 
of infidelity which is now gathering force, with spoliation in 
its train, to burst the social barriers, will rush in with such 
tumultuous energy, that sovereigns, priests, and soldiers will 
be powerless to stem it. That can only he done by the divine 
reconstructive energy, operating through the willing organ¬ 
isms of those who, perceiving the fatal defects of society 
as at present constituted, have banded themselves in the 
sacred cause of divine order, and have freely offered them¬ 
selves to be used as instruments by the hand of God for the 
purpose. They will accomplish this, in the words of Paul, so 
badly rendered in both versions of the New Testament, “Not 
* in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in personal ex- 
‘ perience of pneuma and force. In order that your faith might 
‘ not depend upon man’s wisdom, but upon God’s force.” 1 

That those who are ready to give themselves to this great 
work may the fetter realise its nature, I will endeavour, as 
concisely as possible, to point out the moral defects which 
render society so vulnerable, and to suggest the method by 
which alone it can be so reconstructed, as to be rendered 
impregnable to the tierce assaults with which it is menaced. 

1 1 Corinthians ii. 4, 5. 


117 


CHAPTER VII. 


MORAL PALL WHICH SHROUDS EARTH’S SURFACE — DETERIORATION OF 
MORAL ATMOSPHERE UNDER INVASION OF WESTERN CIVILISATION— 

Christ’s Christianity diametrically opposed to that of the 

CHURCHES—FALSE SYSTEM OF RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR EDUCATION 
—CHRISTENDOM : ITS POLITICS, COMMERCE, AND FINANCE, ALL ON 
AN INFERNAL BASIS — CORRUPTION OF ITS CHURCHES — BLINDNESS 
AND INDIFFERENCE OF SO-CALLED CHRISTIANS TO THE INCONSIST¬ 
ENCIES OF THEIR LIVES—CHRISTIAN ETHICS BURIED UNDER ANTI¬ 
CHRISTIAN DOGMAS—A QUICKENING OF CONSCIENCE TAKING PLACE 
AMONG THE CLERGY — CANON FREMANTLE ON THE u NEW REFOR¬ 
MATION.” 

To any one who has caught a glimpse, however transient, of 
this world as it appears to those who are in the superior 
regions of the one which is interlocked with it, though invis¬ 
ible to us, it presents a most appalling spectacle. What we 
call the beauties of nature are more or less concealed by 
what I can only describe as clouds, composed of living, 
sentient, perpetually moving atoms. The thickness of these 
clouds corresponds in density to the moral condition of the 
invisible human beings whose atoms compose them. Inter¬ 
mingled with them are the atomic forces of the animal crea- 
tion, and in a lower stratum those of nature, which reveal 
themselves in a more or less distorted aspect, according to 
the medium through which they are seen. There are still 
portions of the globe where nature does not appear altogether 
unlovely. These are the regions sparsely inhabited by 
savage tribes, where the population is extremely thin, and 
which, excepting in the case of some rare explorer, are un¬ 
known to, and untouched by, civilisation. Here the atmos¬ 
phere is comparatively clear, and nature relatively unde tiled. 


118 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


There are other portions also to some extent free from taint: 
these are the regions from which an ancient civilisation 
has long since vanished, and which, having been left for 
many centuries undisturbed, have regained a comparative 
purity of atmosphere. This moral pall, which seems to 
shroud the earth’s surface, is constantly spreading and in¬ 
creasing in denseness and darkness. From this point of view 
the dark continent par excellence is Europe. * London is 
enveloped in a moral fog as black a§ the blackest it has ever 
known materially: on all the planet’s superfices there is 
no blacker spot than this, though the other European capitals 
are as dark. But everywhere there are degrees of texture, 
of colouring, and of vivacity, on the part of the atomic par¬ 
ticles, corresponding to the national character, and the pre¬ 
vailing moral quality. Thus visualised, the atoms take the 
form in the beholder’s eyes of infusoria, and the whole of this 
material atmosphere seems a vast scene of the most ferocious 
animal life, where every unit is struggling in incessant and 
never-ending combat with those around. It is a field of 
predatory warfare of the most sanguinary description. It is 
“ matter in motion ” indeed, and very angry matter. Whole 
hordes of these militant atoms seem now and then to invade 
spaces where the texture of the atmosphere is finer, the colour 
lighter, and the atoms less voracious; then the nature which 
appeared beneath it becomes obscured, and a new region is 
more completely subjugated than it was before by the in-roll¬ 
ing volume of more dense and concentrated evil. 

Japan is especially an illustration of an invasion of this 
description. Before the opening of this island to Western 
civilisation, “so called,” there was no area, containing the 
same denseness of population, where the moral conditions of 
the enveloping cloud were so relatively pure. Alas! now it 
has altogether changed both texture, colour, and disposition 
of atoms, and though differing widely in all other respects 
from that of China, the process of deterioration is going on 
far more rapidly than in the latter empire. 

I am aware that this picture will be considered fantastic in 
the highest degree,—the product of the inexplicable but con¬ 
venient expression “ a disordered imagination,” or of that still 
more unknown quantity, “ a slight tinge of insanity,”—so 1 


ANTI-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 


119 


present it to the incredulous and—if I may without offence 
call him so—dense reader, as an image, and not as a fact, 
if he cannot entertain the possibility of its being one. It 
will still enable him to form some vague idea of the horror 
and the darkness of the moral conditions by which he is 
surrounded, and in the midst of which he lives so cheerfully. 
Of this he may rest assured, whether he believes it or not, 
nothing that he can picture, at all approaches the reality. It 
is true there is to this black cloud a silver lining, of which 
I will speak later; were it not so, nothing would be left to 
humanity but utter despair. 

In order to contrast the light with the darkness, let us 
compare Christ’s Christianity with the world’s. 

Christ said, “ Suffer little children to come unto me, and 
forbid them not;” and again, “If any man desire to be first, 
the same shall be last of all and servant of all.” The Church 
says, “ Little children, come regularly to the Sunday-school; 
try and get to the top of the class, and if you succeed in de¬ 
feating your companions, you shall have a prize.” Thus from 
its early infancy the child is taught the vice of competition, 
the door is opened by its spiritual pastors and masters to the 
evil spirits of envy, ambition, conceit, and egotism, who do 
not fail to rush in and lock it after them. When it is well 
barred against the entry of the angelic ministrants of love, 
meekness, and humility, and the child arrives at a certain 
age, under the stimulant of rivalry, jealousy, and emulation, 
the Church says, “Now you are old enough to eat some 
bread and drink some wine. This is the royal road to Christ’s 
favour: now keep the interests of your own soul steadily in 
view—which you will find all the more easy after the training 
to keep yourself always at the top of the class at school— 
‘communicate’ regularly, and you are safe.” 

Meantime the religious teaching which the child received, 
began probably in its infancy with Bible anecdotes illustrated 
with pictures. First he is told the story of the Fall, and 
shown the serpent twisting round a tree, and Eve under it 
eating an apple. It is explained to him that in this way sin 
entered into the world. He now knows the reason why he 
sometimes feels naughty. Then he is shown God as a grey- 
bearded man walking in the Garden of Eden in the cool of 


120 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


the day, looking very angry, and searching for Adam and 
Eve, who are hiding behind a bush; and the conversation 
which takes place is repeated to him. He now understands 
the nature, character, and appearance of the Deity, and of 
the relation he occupies towards Him. He is now told the 
story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden, all because 
Eve was disobedient and ate an apple. When he reflects 
upon his tendency to fall into the same temptation, he feels 
very sad, has a lurking sympathy with Eve, and a slight 
sense of undue severity and injustice on the part of God. 
This is confirmed by the story of Cain and Abel, in which 
God disregards Cain’s sacrifice without any apparent cause, 
and afterwards brands him with the mark of a curse for kill¬ 
ing his brother; but what infuses the first slight distrust 
into his innocent confiding mind, is Cain’s remark that every 
one who finds him will slay him, when, as Abel was dead, the 
only man alive on earth was his own father Adam. Then 
he is told the story of the Flood, when all the world was 
drowned except eight persons, which he also thinks was a 
very terrible thing for God to do; and to impress it upon 
him, he is given an ark with a great number of little wooden 
animals in pairs. If he is a child of a thoughtful turn, this 
gives him much food for reflection, more especially as they 
are the only toys he is allowed to play with on a Sunday; 
and he asks why these are holier toys than other toys, and 
speculates how the animals could all get into the ark, and 
on what they were fed, and how only four men could take- 
care of them all, and which was the smallest that it was 
worth while to save;—and so on through the whole Bible, 
till his religious conceptions are reduced to the level of those 
of a savage on the Congo, and are stamped upon his tender 
imagination with an indelible impress which carries its hate¬ 
ful mark upon him far into life, and either develops into an 
ignorant and superstitious fanaticism, or crystallises into an 
apathetic conformity, or, by the force of reaction, impels him 
to break out into open unbelief. 

Under the combined influence of an imagination thus ex¬ 
cited, and a temper thus roused to emulation, the child enters 
upon life. At school and at college his worst passions are 
stimulated, that personal success may be achieved at the 


SECULAR TEACHING. 


121 


cost of his fellows. He is punished if he helps them; every 
triumph that he gains, every prize that he wins, is purchased 
•at the price of a humiliation upon some of those brethren 
'whom he is told by Christ to love better than himself. 

This desire to be first, which is actually denounced in so 
many words by the great Teacher as fatal to moral progress, 
is the one which so-called Christian teachers insist upon most 
-earnestly, because it is essential to worldly progress ; and men 
strive to be senior wranglers, in the hope that it may be a 
stepping-stone to what is called “ ecclesiastical preferment,” 
•and ultimately possibly to rich bishoprics. 

These be thy teachers, O Israel! 

Nor is the educational system all over the world funda¬ 
mentally wrong only in the principle of competition which it 
•excites, but all intellectual development as at present prac¬ 
tised in all Christian countries is anti-Christian, in the sense 
that it is not preceded by a corresponding moral development. 
To force intelligence alone, before the affections have been 
trained to steer the human will Godward, is like crowding sail 
•upon a ship, and exposing her to the tempests of the ocean 
without a rudder. This is especially true of state-aided edu¬ 
cation. Inasmuch as the popular idea of religion is, that it 
-consists of dogmas, about which people differ, and that moral 
training is inseparable from these dogmas, moral training is 
left to depend upon the accident of the home, and the acqui¬ 
sition of secular knowledge is forced upon children, who thus 
grow up into educated devils, instead of into uneducated ones. 
Unless there be an inherent instinct of rectitude, or the 
family training happens to be good, the development of 
the intelligence and the acquisition of knowledge, means 
simply the development of the capacity for crime, and the 
acquisition of means for committing it. At this moment 
many governments—the British among the number—are 
actually contributing large sums from the pockets of the tax¬ 
payers, for the manufacture and education of socialists, nihil¬ 
ists, internationalists, and the whole party of anarchy in 
Europe, which are a speciality of Christendom. So are hypo¬ 
crites. Secular teaching produces the one, and religious 
teaching the other. In Moslem countries, where there are 
no schools in which the Koran is not taught, neither class 


122 


SCIENTIFIC KELIGTON. 


exists. Society is nevertheless infected in other and not less 
fatal ways. The nature of the moral training to be given 
to the young, does not consist in instructing them by word 
of mouth as to what is right and what is wrong, and as to the 
difference between what we call good and evil, that standard 
being at present a purely arbitrary one, based not upon the 
divine law, but the law which enlightened selfishness has 
suggested, as being the most expedient in the interests of 
society. The process by which a child can be brought into- 
internal union with the Deity, is one of those mysteries 
which may have been known to the mystics, and the sages of 
the most early religions; but those of their interpreters who- 
have attempted to unravel them for us in these latter days, 
are silent upon the point: it nevertheless exists, though I am 
not able to do more than allude to it here, because it can 
only be apprehended as it is unfolded in practice. There is 
much hidden knowledge of this description, which can only 
be mentioned as existing at present, because it is by experi¬ 
ment and illustration alone that it can be understood. It 
will be readily admitted by any lecturer on chemistry or elec¬ 
tricity, for instance, that if he could not illustrate his lecture 
as he went along by experiment, he could not convey his 
meaning to his audience, and indeed many of his facts would 
excite their incredulity if they rested upon his ipse dixit alone^ 
It is the same thing with the divine science which governs 
the chemical changes, the magnetic affinities, and the atomic- 
combinations of human organisms. Suffice it to say that in 
them, when their laws come to be understood, will be found 
to reside the potencies by which the pure life-current may 
be invoked, charged with divine wusdom; and that under 
its guidance those little children who are not now suffered 
to come to Christ, will be no longer the victims of an educa¬ 
tional system which forbids them to do so, but will be gently 
led to the loving arms which long to fold them now, as they 
did 1900 years ago, to the infinitely tender bosom. 

It is no wonder that the man who has been thus educated* 
enters keenly into the competitive system, which gives its 
infernal life and energy to civilisation, “so called.” In com¬ 
merce he struggles to enrich himself at the expense of his 
fellows, and inasmuch as the commercial code is elastic, and 


FINANCIAL CORRUPTION. 


123 


it is impossible even for the most cunningly devised laws 
to anticipate the ingenuity of pirates, who could not live at 
all if they did not prey upon each other, there are hundreds 
of ways by which even the relative honesty which these laws 
seek to impose may be evaded, so that men’s consciences are 
often practically regulated by the dangers they may incur of 
being sent to prison. Here, again, the Church affords no 
assistance : it does not consider it to be its province to inter¬ 
fere in the practical details of finance; but, on the con¬ 
trary, as it forms part of a great financial system, and is 
bound up with the economic interests of the country, it 
thrives in proportion as the country is rich—in other words,, 
in the degree in which other countries are exploits for its 
own benefit—and fattens on the prosperity of rich bankers* 
brokers, merchants, tradesmen, and so forth, who in turn find 
that the ostentatious profession of religion gains them con¬ 
fidence, and consequently facilities for their financial com¬ 
binations ; the most pious men, therefore, not unfrequently 
figure in the list of the most fraudulent of bankrupts. 

The whole system of commerce and finance is as rotten to- 
the core, as fundamentally anti-Christian, as the system of 
education. That love of money, that taking thought for the 
morrow, that hasting to be rich, which is denounced in the 
most unequivocal terms by Christ, who told His disciples, 
that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a 
needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of 
heaven, flourishes under the aegis of the Christian Church,, 
which makes its own rich livings an article of commerce, 
which traffics in the cure of souls, and instead of claiming 
for its head the lowest station in society, claims for it the 
highest, utterly denying that there is any truth in the divine¬ 
saying, “He that abaseth himself shall be exalted, and he 
‘ that exalteth himself shall be abased.” So Christ says now, 
as He said then, “ Beware of the scribes, which love to go. 

* in long clothing, and love salutations in the market-places* 

* and the chief seats in the synagogues, and the uppermost 
‘ rooms at feasts ; which devour widows’ houses, and for a 
‘ pretence make long prayers: these shall receive greater 
‘ damnation.” Indeed there is not a denunciation which He 
hurled at the Pharisees, which does not apply with equal force 


124 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


to the Christian priesthood of the present day all over the 
"world. There is not a Church called by His name, which 
is not full of money-changers, or one to which the scourge 
and the epithets which He employed, are not as appropriate 
as they were then. The “ dens of thieves,” and the “ ser¬ 
pents,” and the “ generation of vipers.” the “ blind guides,” 
the “ fools,” and the “ hypocrites,” are all here awaiting their 
judgment, “ straining at the gnat and swallowing the camel,” 
with this difference, however, that while they also omit “ the 
weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith,” 
instead of paying tithes of mint, anise, and cumin, they 
insist upon receiving them. This is the Church which awaits, 
decked with bridal attire, the approach of the Bridegroom. 
Those “ long robes ” which distinguish the spiritual from the 
temporal peer, are perchance “ his wedding garment,” and 
the electric light which illumines his palace, the “ lamp kept 
trimmed and burning.” 

Under the auspices of these spiritual lords does the State 
make wars, annex territory, break treaties when necessary, 
and perform alj and sundry acts of statecraft, in its struggle 
for supremacy with other Christian States, each engaged in 
■one perpetual effort to suppress the others, and aggrandise 
itself at their expense, by force or fraud. 

In co-operation with these Church dignitaries does each 
political party in the State intrigue for place and power, too 
often sacrificing what they know to be the interests of the 
•country to party supremacy, and always sacrificing the in¬ 
terests of true religion, as embodied in the teaching of Christ. 

I do not mean to imply that they can help doing this. 
As society is at present constituted, it is practically impos¬ 
sible for any class of men, in whatever profession they are 
■engaged, to fulfil the law of Christ. 

Soldiers and sailors must murder; statesmen must rob, 
since it is always a question of robbing or being robbed; 
lawyers must lie; parsons must compromise, and so violate 
their consciences, if they have got any; merchants and 
tradesmen must cheat if they expect to live,—and so on. 
There is not a man from the top of society to the bottom, who 
is not compelled to live a life of crime, regarded from the 
standpoint of divine morality, and the essential spirit of 


RELIGIOUS INCONSISTENCY. 


125. 


Christ s teaching and example. That it was impracticables 
in His day, is proved by the fact that He was not allowed 
to preach it and live more than three years. But it has 
become practicable now, and though those who combine to 
prove it to be so may suffer a moral martyrdom in the- 
attempt, their success sooner or later is assured. It was for 
this Christ was born into the world, and He accentuated it 
when He said, “ Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit, 
the earth.” For as St Ignatius says in the third chapter of 
his Epistle to the Ephesians,—“ Christianity is not the work 
‘ of an outward profession, but shows itself in the power of' 
‘ faith, if a man be found faithful unto the end. It is better 
‘ for a man to hold his peace, and be, than to say he is a Chris- 
‘ tian, and not to be. It is good to teach, if what he says he 
* does likewise.” 

So long as men persist in considering that secular life is. 
one kind of life, which is to be followed during six days of 
the week, and that the one remaining day is to be devoted to 
another kind of life altogether, which they miscall religious,, 
so long will the anomalies which characterise Christendom 
continue; because it implies that a wide distinction must be 
maintained between the service of God and the service of self 
—and that the latter is legitimate apart from the former. 
Whereas, there is only one service for man on earth, and that, 
is the service of God and the fellow-man. 

Unfortunately many of those who will admit the fearful 
inconsistencies by which their consciences are grieved, are- 
reconciled to them by the fixed belief that they are irre¬ 
mediable in this world, owing to the evil inherent in the- 
nature of man. They console themselves by the considera¬ 
tion that his heart is deceitful above all things and desper¬ 
ately wicked, and must always remain so; that man is the- 
victim of a moral malady, which they call “ original sin,” 
which is incurable because it was born in him; that because- 
we are suffering from the fault of our first parents, therefore 
our redemption does not lie in any effort that we can make 
ourselves, but that we have been bought with a price, and our 
salvation in another world has been secured by the blood of 
Christ, who is the propitiation for our sins; that to think that, 
we can overcome or expel the evil taint in us, is in fact an 


126 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


outrage upon the majesty of God, and a denial of the efficacy 
of His scheme for our salvation; that it is not the function 
of religion to do this—which would be to try and achieve the 
impossible—but to prepare us for another world, and imbue us 
with a belief in the efficacy of the sacraments, and the means 
appointed by Providence for reaching it; that the contrast 
between the luxury of the rich, and the squalor and misery 
of the poor, is included in the divine social order, because it 
is said, “ The poor ye shall have always with you,” unmindful 
of the divine method ordered for the relief of these same poor, 
“ Sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor; ” that a human 
effort to change all this would be futile as well as presumptu¬ 
ous, because it would strike at the basis of the whole social 
fabric—the defects of which are freely admitted—and would, 
if it were persisted in, excite a number of visionary enthusi¬ 
asts to engage in an attempt at what might appear reform, 
but which would have the practical result of bringing down 
both Church and State, and producing a condition of chaos, 
the evils of which latter state would be worse than the first, 
—for there would be nothing to put up in the place of that 
which had been pulled down. While, therefore, not attempt¬ 
ing to deny that these evils exist, they maintain that it is 
better to bear the ills we have, than to fly to others that we 
know not of, more especially as these last but a short time; 
while we have the promise of God that, if we believe in the 
merits of His Son, we have a future of eternal bliss secured to 
us in spite of our manifold shortcomings. 

It will be observed that the whole of this line of argument 
is based on doctrines which have been constructed out of the 
Bible, on the hypothesis that it is literally, or at all events, in 
a spiritual sense, infallibly inspired. Happily I am relieved 
from entering upon any discussion on these points, for evi¬ 
dences are every day multiplying that, in the Church itself, 
many eminent divines are rapidly abandoning them one after 
another, and I will allow some of them to speak for them¬ 
selves. Thus, a professor of divinity, preaching in the Univer¬ 
sity of Oxford not long since, said : “ The field of speculative 
‘ theology may be regarded as almost exhausted,—we must be 
‘ content henceforward to be Christian agnostics.” The rector 
of the City Church, at Oxford, Mr Cartaret Fletcher, preached 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


127 


a sermon before the University recently, in which the follow¬ 
ing passage occurred: “Not long since it was the general 
4 belief that man had been created perfect, and that he had 

* fallen from perfection into an abyss of doom, whence only 
4 an elect fragment of the race would emerge; but it is now 
4 dawning on us that man was created in an undeveloped state, 
4 with a splendid potential wealth of faculty, and that he had 
4 advanced through long ages to his present stage, whence he is 
4 destined to rise higher than imagination can follow him. In 
4 him we see a rough-hewn block being moulded into perfect 
4 shape, and not the reconstruction of the shattered pieces of 

< a faultless image.” This may not be orthodox according to 
the majority, but it is consolatory to know that there are men 
in the Church, who dare to preach their belief in the possi¬ 
bility of moulding the rough-hewn human block into perfect 
shape. Canon Fremantle, in the remarkable article already 
quoted, writes: “ As regards the Scriptures, the theologian of 
4 our epoch will start without any theory of inspiration. He 
4 will be ready to admit that God has revealed Himself in part 
4 in other systems, ancient and modern. He will not pretend 
4 that the Scriptures are absolutely perfect in any part, but 
4 will take them for what they are really worth, and as consti- 
4 tuting a history and a literature in which the development 
4 of a religion is to be studied.” “ The theology of sin and 
redemption ” is treated in an equally broad and enlightened 
spirit. “This,”says the writer, “is the department of the- 
4 ology in which a kind of ideal dogmatism has most interfered 

* with truth. The icieal characters of the wicked and the 
4 just, as they are described in Scripture, have been taken as 
4 literally existing; and since men cannot be ranked “with the 
4 ideally righteous, they have been taken in the mass as belong- 
4 ing to the ideally wicked. Each atom has been regarded as a 
4 conscious and open-eyed contradiction of a revealed standard 
4 of right—a contradiction which is described in the Gospel 
4 as a sin against the Holy Ghost. The false judgments, the 

< mutual condemnations, the hypocrisy, the strange theories 
4 of redemption, the readiness to believe in eternal torments, 

* the ascetic practices and unreal life which have resulted 
4 from this, could hardly be traced out in a lifetime. The re- 
4 construction which will be required will need great labour. 


128 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


‘ But in no department will the results be more fruitful. They 
‘ will bring theological ethics into closer alliance with general 1 

* science and practice. They will enable Christian teachers to- 
treat all men as brothers, and make Christianity the means 

‘ by which the state of men generally may be ameliorated.” 

Here, then, we have the popular idea of inspiration aban¬ 
doned, the theological dogmas concerning sin and redemption 
repudiated, and the Church arraigned for ‘‘the false judg- 
‘ ments, the mutual condemnations, the hypocrisy, the strange 
‘ theories of redemption, the belief in eternal punishments,. 
‘ the ascetic practices and unreal life which have resulted from 
‘ those doctrines,”—in a popular review by a clergyman of the 
Church of England, without official protest by the authorities. 

Hay, more, the existing state of the Church being utterly 
unsatisfactory, he proposes to “ reconstruct it upon altogether 
new lines.” “ The theologian of our epoch,” he says, “ will 
‘ take care not to represent God as a demiurge standing outside 
‘ His work, and putting His hand in here and there. . . . He 

* will probably be little concerned with miracles. It is evident 
‘ that the arguments relied on in the last century do not help 
‘ us now, ... so little stress will be laid on the accounts. 
‘ of the infancy of Christ, since they are mentioned nowhere in 
‘ the New Testament outside the first chapters of the first and 
‘ third gospel .” 1 

The conclusions at which the writer arrives, after a careful 
study of early Church history, and the accretions which have- 
buried Christian ethics under anti-Christian dogmas and for¬ 
mularies, is one which commends itself to the religious in¬ 
stinct of all earnest and thinking men. “ The notion of the- 

* Church;” he says, “ the study of Church history, the practice 
‘ of Church life, will be profoundly modified when once men 
‘ realise that the Church is not necessarily a society held apart 
‘ from the rest of mankind by having different pursuits as its- 

* object, and a peculiar form of government enjoined upon 

* it. The Church will be simply that section of society in 
4 which the Christian spirit reigns; its history will be the his- 

* tory of the working out of the divine principle in human 
4 society, with all its blessed results. The Church of the 

* future will make its worship bear upon the higher end of life,. 

1 Fortnightly Review, March 1887. 


THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 


129 


• or rather it will teach that the true ritual is a holy life in 
‘ all its departments, and thus it will merge itself more and 
‘ more into the general society, being ready, in the true spirit 
‘ of the Lord, to lose itself that it may save mankind.” 

That an Anglican divine should have discovered that the 
true mission of the Church is to lose itself that it may save 
mankind, and that he should be able to write that his views 
“ are not opposed by any solid array of party opinion, but 
rather find men in all parties who admit them,” is in itself 
a justification for this attempt to point out the way by which 
the Church may “ lose itself ” with the greatest advantage to 
the humanity it professes to desire to benefit. 

I have quoted Canon Fremantle’s article freely, because 
it is always more desirable that corrupt institutions should 
be assailed by those who are within their pale, than by those 
who, being without it, may be supposed to be swayed by 
undue prejudice; but I venture to differ widely from him as 
to the quarter to which we must look to find foundation- 
stones on which to rear that Church of the future, to which 
he has so eloquently alluded. “ The ground,” he says, “ has 
been cleared and the building has to be erected. The chief 
point on which our energies must be expended is”—not, 
as one might suppose, the search after divine truth where 
alone it is to be found; not the withdrawal with bent head 
and uncovered feet into the Holy of Holies, into that inward 
sanctuary where God dwells in each of us, into which, when 
we have prepared it by lives of self-abnegation and self¬ 
purification, His otfh glory shines, and the light of inspira¬ 
tion penetrates, to show us how we may be builded up as 
living stones into His temple,—it is not in that “ kingdom of 
God which is within us” that we are to seek for guidance 
at this supreme moment, when all that we have heretofore 
believed in is so rapidly slipping away from us. No; the 
chief point on which our energies must be expended is— 
« Church history ” ! Oh, most lame and impotent conclusion J 
What shall we get out of it, except wrangling in these days, 
over the wranglings men had in those ? Renewed strife over 
dogmas and doctrines which no man can settle, because the 
disputations to which they will give rise will be intellectual 
disputations; and it is not upon the intellect that the Church 


130 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


of the future must be founded, but upon the affections. 
Men fought over the letter then, for the spirit had soon 
vanished out of it, and the concentration of our attention 
on the quarrels of the first Christians, beginning with the 
apostles, will only increase our conviction that the divine 
life by which alone the world can be redeemed, cannot be 
extracted from so impure a source. This study will be most 
useful in stimulating us to pull down: it will help us in no 
wise to build up. 

If all impartial, laborious, and conscientious research 
hitherto, has only revealed the essential rottenness of that 
foundation which is causing the whole fabric to totter, why 
imagine that a further investigation into musty parchments, 
or long-buried scripts, will afford more solid building-ground ? 
If they contain most brilliant flashes of inspiration, as un¬ 
doubtedly they do, it is only he who has the faculty of de¬ 
tecting inspiration when he sees it, who can. discriminate 
between the true and the false. To begin by grubbing into 
these records is to put the cart before the horse. “ Seek ye 
first the kingdom of Heaven and His righteousness, and all 
other things shall be added unto you,” even these gems of 
early inspiration; but they will come as confirmations of 
truth already discovered by quite another process than that 
of the antiquary, and herein they possess a great value to 
those who need such confirmation, as I shall presently proceed 
to show. Meantime there is another class, for whom such 
records will have a very slight value indeed; and as no 
Church of the future can stand, of which they do not form 
the living stones, as well as the theologians, and as they are 
quite as sincere in their search after divine truth, as those 
whose profession it is to teach it, it is time to see how this 
new structure, which is to be at once social, scientific, and 
religious, can be adapted so as to meet their requirements. 


131 


CHAPTER VIII. 

THE EFFECT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY UPON MODERN THOUGHT—THE 
PREJUDICES WHICH IT EXCITES—THE CONFLICT BETWEEN SCIENCE 
AND RELIGION TO WHICH IT HAS GIVEN RISE—INTOLERANCE BOTH 
OF THEOLOGIANS AND MEN OF SCIENCE—BIGOTRY OF THE LATTER— 
CONTRADICTIONS IN WHICH THEY HAVE BECOME INVOLVED—FACTS 
OF NATURE, DISCOVERED BY SUPERFICIAL INVESTIGATIONS, VALU¬ 
ABLE—EMPIRICAL SCIENCE INCOMPETENT TO ARRIVE AT THE DIVINE 
TRUTHS IN NATURE—THIS CAN ONLY BE ACHIEVED BY DEVELOPMENT 
OF INNER FACULTIES IN MAN—HENCE ALL SCIENTIFIC CONJECTURES 
AND HYPOTHESES WORTHLESS—CONFLICTING UTTERANCES AND CON¬ 
CLUSIONS OF PROFESSORS HUXLEY AND TYNDALL ILLUSTR VTE THIS. 

No one who has watched the signs of the times can doubt 
that the Church has exercised a very disastrous influence, 
during the last few years, upon the more intelligent part of 
the community; and upon no section has it operated more 
detrimentally than upon men of science, and the youth who 
are developing under the impulse which science has given 
to independence of thought. It has acted disastrously in this 
way, that the tendency of those who are reverting to the 
autocratic pretensions of Rome, is to invest the priestly body 
with a monopoly of knowledge of spiritual things as an in¬ 
herent attribute of their sacred office, a sort of third-hand 
inspiration derived from the Church. In these days a claim 
of this sort is a barbarism, which will no more be tolerated 
than that of a Red Indian “ medicine-man.” The only 
monopoly any Church has a right to claim, is a monopoly 
of the errors which are peculiar to it—what truth it has, is 
generally common to all. The arrogance of this assumption 
is especially galling to scientific men and philosophers—who 
are, as a rule, equally arrogant in their own way — for it 


132 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


implies that those who make a business of science, are 
morally inferior to those who make a business of religion, 
and are excluded from any knowledge of it by reason of their 
rejection of clerical authority. Hence arises a prejudice 
against truths, which, if they were not so inseparably linked 
with error and authority, might appeal to their purer and 
nobler instincts. In throwing the dirty water out of the 
theological tub, they throw the child out with it, and the 
emotional part of their natures is apt to wither under the 
constant exercise of that rational faculty, which they insist is 
the only guide to truth. Looked at from the angelic stand¬ 
point, these two classes present a very painful and startling 
spectacle. Inasmuch as religion deals entirely with the affec- 
tional side of nature, when this is perverted, it takes, in the 
eyes of those who regard it with the tender gaze of pure love, 
the form of lunacy; and inasmuch as science, as at present 
pursued, exercises only the intelligence, when this is per¬ 
verted, it takes, under the clear eye of perfect reason, the 
form of imbecility. Looked down upon from the lofty sum¬ 
mit of pure love and perfect wisdom, the contest which rages 
here between philosophers and theologians, seems to be one 
between idiots and maniacs. 

Swedenborg, who was one of the most learned men of 
science which the last century produced, and whose opinion, 
therefore, is entitled to some weight, insists very strongly on 
this point. “ The insanity of science,” he says, “ is likened in 
‘ the Bible to drunkenness. Those are called drunkards who 
‘ believe nothing but what they comprehend, and therefore 
‘ investigate the mysteries of faith; in consequence of which 
‘ they necessarily fall into errors, since they are under the 
‘ guidance of sensual, scientific, or philosophic knowledge only. 
‘ The thinking principle in man is merely terrestrial, corporeal, 
‘ and material objects, and in which the ideas of his thought 
‘ are founded and terminated. Now to think and reason from 
‘ those ideas concerning things divine, is to plunge into erron- 
‘ eous and perverse opinions. . . . The errors and insanity thus 
‘ derived are called in the Word drunkenness. Thus Isaiah 
‘ says : ‘ How say ye unto Pharaoh, I am the son of the wise, 
‘ the son of ancient kings ? Where are thy wise men ? and let 
‘ them tell thee now. Jehovah hath mingled a spirit of per- 


SCIENTIFIC INSANITIES. 


133 


‘ versities in the midst thereof; and they have caused Egypt 
‘ to err in every work thereof, as a drunken man staggereth in 
his vomit / 1 A drunken man here denotes those who desire 
‘ to investigate spiritual and celestial things by the light of 

* science; and Egypt signifies the scientific principle, and hence 
‘ calls himself the son of the wise. They who believe nothing 
‘ but what they comprehend by the evidence of the senses, and 

* the light of science, were also called ‘ mighty to drink.’ As 
‘ in Isaiah, ‘Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, 
‘ and intelligent in their own sight! Woe unto them that are 
‘ mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong 
‘ drink !’” 2 Again the Swedish seer remarks : “ A desire to 

* investigate the mysteries of faith, by means of the senses and 
‘ of science, was not only the cause of the decline of the most 
‘ ancient Church, but it is also the cause of the fall or decline 
‘ of every Church, for hence come not only false opinions, but 
‘ also evils of life. The worldly or corporeal man says in his 
‘ heart, if I am not instructed concerning faith and everything 
‘ relating to it by the senses, so that I may see them, or by 
‘ science, so that I may understand them, I will not believe ; 
‘ and he confirms himself in his incredulity by this fact that 
‘ natural things cannot be contrary to spiritual. Thus he is 
‘ desirous of being instructed in celestial and divine subjects 
‘ by the experience of his senses, which is as impossible as for 
‘ a camel to go through the eye of a needle—for the more he 
‘ desires to grow wise by such a process, the more he blinds 
‘ himself, till at length he comes to believe nothing, not even 
‘ the reality of spiritual experiences or of eternal life.” 3 

When we reflect upon the bigotries, the hatred, the perse¬ 
cution, and the intolerance which have characterised all 
Churches that have taken as their chief corner-stone the 
teaching of Christ, which was pure love and nothing else, 
we can only account for the people who profess to be ani¬ 
mated by this love, and who manifest it by a hate which has 
provoked bloody wars, as having become insane; while those 
who maintain that the laws which govern the world are 
the result of a fortuitous concourse of atoms, and that man 
derived his origin from the amoeba, and his intelligence from 

1 Isaiah, xix. 11, 12, 14. 

3 A. C. 126, 128. 


2 A. C. 1072. 


134 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


the monkey, propound theories which suggest a feeble and 
distorted condition of the rational faculty. It is a somewhat 
melancholy reflection, that as ancient superstitions lose their 
hold upon religious devotees, men of science should pander 
to their credulity with scientific superstitions of another kind, 
concerning the physical basis of life, the evolution of man 
from protoplasm, and so forth, in which the public are exhibit¬ 
ing extraordinary readiness to believe. If the effort of imagi¬ 
nation which the Biblical narrative calls upon them to make, 
in supposing man to have stepped full-fledged on earth from 
the hands of his Creator, is too great for the modern mind, 
that which the popular theory of evolution involves is no 
less violent. It does not seem to have occurred to searchers 
after truth on this subject, that the resources of the Deity 
are not so easily exhausted, and that there may have been 
a third way; but this is not to be found in the superficial 
letter of . the Bible, nor in the superficial observations of 
science. Both classes of truth-seekers must learn to dive 
deeper, for there is a spirit within the letter, as there is a 
soul in nature, and it is in their concealed arcana that the 
book of nature and the most divinely inspired passages in 
the books of God, find their synthesis. It is there that the 
theologian who has found the key to the inner meaning of 
what is now obscure, unintelligible, and even often obscene, 
in what is called Holy Writ, will arrive at the same truth 
with the philosopher who has found the key to the mysteries 
of the book of nature, by probing into them by the light of 
his own intelligence, when this has become divinely illumi¬ 
nated by the development of his purest affections. It is not 
in the outer material sense of words, nor in the outer material 
aspect of things, that divine truth is to be found: they are 
merely the caskets in which it is hidden. Both sets of investi¬ 
gators must develop the inner material sense; and with that— 
enlightened by the spirit of God, which pervades both—they 
may each continue their respective methods of research : but 
they must begin by admitting that this inner material or 
subsurface sense exists, as contradistinguished from the outer 
material or literal sense, which is surface, and, turning 
away from the husk, must go in search of the kernel. This 
can only be accomplished in one way, and that is the same 


COMMON BASIS OF RECONSTRUCTION. 


135 


for both. It involves a special effort of self-sacrifice and self¬ 
purification, which would be impossible of human attainment, 
had God not provided the special potency to which I have 
so often alluded, but the nature of which it is not possible 
to describe without entering upon these preliminary remarks, 
which have extended over a greater number of pages than I 
anticipated when I first took up my pen. 

From passages which I have already quoted, it has been 
made clear that there are men in the clerical profession who 
are ready to abandon their old dogmas; who, conscious of the 
defects in the Church, are ready to see it lose itself for the 
sake of humanity; and who are anxious to co-operate in 
building up a Church for the future, which shall “ teach 
that the true ritual is a holy life in all its departments.” 
Here is a basis for reconstruction, upon which the man of 
science cannot refuse to build; once let it be clearly under¬ 
stood that the Church of the future does not demand a belief 
in any special dogma, that it imposes no ceremonial observ¬ 
ances, and demands no subjection of the reason, no violation 
of the conscience, and the man of science will be the first to 
join hands in the good work of rearing such an edifice. If 
we are to judge from a recent utterance by Professor Huxley, 
he is already far on the road towards such a consum¬ 
mation. In an article entitled “Science and Morals ,” 1 he 
writes:— 

“ The student of nature, who starts from the axiom of the 
‘ universality of the law of causation, cannot refuse to admit 
‘ an external existence; if he admits the conservation of energy, 
‘ he cannot deny the possibility of an eternal energy;'if he 
‘ admits the existence of immaterial phenomena in the form 
« of consciousness, he must admit the possibility, at any rate, 
‘ of an eternal series of such phenomena; and if his studies 
‘ have not been barren of the best fruits of the investigation 
‘ of nature, he will have sense enough to see that, when Spinoza 
« says, ‘ Per Deum intelligo ens absolute infinitum, hoc est 
« substantiam constantem infinitis attributio,’ the God so con- 
‘ ceived is one that only a very great fool indeed would deny, 
‘ even in his heart. Physical science is as little atheistic as 
‘ it is materialistic.” 

1 Fortnightly Review, December 1886. 


136 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


The importance of this passage is that it is written from 
the heart and not from the intellect, for it is in indirect con¬ 
tradiction with the logical deductions of Professor Huxley’s 
scientific conclusions. In the same article he remarks, “ That 
it would be quite correct to say that material changes are the 
causes of psychical phenomena.” And again, he talks of 
the “phenomena of consciousness as such, and apart from 
the physical process by which they are called into existence.” 
These phenomena he has already described as being immaterial 
phenomena, and these, he says, are called into existence , not 
by God, but by a physical process, a conception as unthink¬ 
able as any ever propounded by theologians, and irreconcilable 
with the statement that physical science is not materialistic. 
The words “ psychical phenomena,” are a little vague; and 
Professor Huxley would probably include affection, volition, 
and reason under this head, and he makes them have their 
origin in “ material changes.” But his nature is too noble, 
and the affectional side of him too highly developed, to allow 
him to be dragged by his rational faculty down to the atheism 
and surface materialism, which have reduced some philoso¬ 
phers to the condition of imbecility I have already alluded 
to, and which, he admits, makes a man “ a fool indeed ” ; so 
he clings to his God, and to immaterialism, in spite of the 
logical dilemma in which he is landed thereby, and which 
forces from him some curious and contradictory utterances. 

Thus he says at one moment that “ consciousness is a func¬ 
tion of the brain,” and as it certainly cannot be of a brain 
which has undergone the chemical change called death, he 
goes on to explain that by function he means “ that effect 
or series of effects which result from the activity of an organ.” 
This implies that the brain is made active by a force acting 
on it, otherwise it would keep itself alive by its own gen¬ 
erative energy, and contradicts his previous statement that 
“material changes are the causes of psychical phenomena.” 
It is evident they are only the transmitting media for them. 
In discoursing to the Christian young men of Cambridge, 
he tells them that “ it is an indisputable truth that what we 
‘ call the material world is only known to us under the forms 
‘ of the ideal world; and, as Descartes tells us, our knowledge 
‘ of the soul is more intimate and certain than our knowledge 


BIOLOGICAL SPECULATIONS. 


137 


‘ of the body .” 1 If our knowledge of the soul is so intimate 
and certain, is it identical with that consciousness which is 
a function of the brain ? or is the brain the organ which it 
renders active ? If the soul is not material, of what does it 
consist ? On these and many other questions regarding the 
soul we should have been glad of some light from Professor 
Huxley, more especially as he tells us that, “ If there is one 
‘ thing clear about the progress of modern science, it is the 
‘ tendency to reduce all scientific problems, except those which 
‘ are purely mathematical, to questions of molecular physics 
‘ —that is to say, to the attractions, repulsions* motions, and 
‘ co-ordination of the ultimate particles of matter.” Is the 
composition of the soul a scientific problem ? and if not, 
why not? If it is not, because it is beyond the region of 
scientific investigation, and cannot be reduced to a question 
of molecular physics, why venture to say that our know¬ 
ledge of it is more intimate and certain than that of our 
body; or to include in that investigation consciousness, and 
dare to tell us what it is or is not a product of, and that it 
is immaterial, and therefore “ devoid of the ultimate particles 
of matter ” ? 

In a word, why trespass upon the regions of subsurface 
matter with the processes of surface observation, and presume 
to tell us anything about them ? Science plumes itself upon 
refusing to investigate anything outside the region it calls 
positive—but to this region it fixes no limits; and no medium 
at a spiritual circle makes greater claims upon our credulity 
than when it tries to tell us how we are made, and what part 
of us is material, and what immaterial. 

The professor of biology, discoursing upon the origin and 
nature of human life as an authority, is as arrogant and pre¬ 
sumptuous as the professor of theology who assumes to him¬ 
self the right to dictate on matters of divine truth. It is 
difficult to say which set of guides is the blindest. 

“The phenomena of matter and force,” says Professor 
Tyndall, “lie within our intellectual range, and, so far as 
‘ they reach, we will at all hazards push our inquiries; but 
‘ behind, and above, and around all, the vast mystery of this 
‘ universe lies unsolved, and, so far as we are concerned, is 
1 Lay Sermons, p. 340. 



H8 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


‘ incapable of solution .” 1 Then why go beyond it ? Unfortu¬ 
nately that intellectual range is so excessively limited, that it 
just perceives the few surface croppings up of the laws which 
govern the phenomena of matter and force; but the data 
which they furnish are not only totally inadequate for the 
construction of any sound theory of the universe, but are 
highly misleading. This is because all attempt to solve the 
vast mystery of this universe, under the limitations imposed 
by our external senses and our intellectual faculties, must 
prove abortive, because it necessarily involves the ideas of 
space subject to those limitations, and dependent upon meas¬ 
urements which they afford, but which do not exist in fact. 

This is illustrated by the statement of Professor Tyndall, 

“ that the idea of distance between the attractive atoms is of 
4 the highest importance in our conception of the system of 
‘ this world; for the matter of the world may be classified 

* under two distinct heads,—atoms and molecules which have 
‘ already combined, and thus satisfied their mutual attractions 

* —and atoms and molecules which have not yet combined, and 
4 whose mutual attractions are therefore unsatisfied.” But in¬ 
asmuch as there is no limit to atoms, which are as eternal, 
infinite, and indestructible as the forces of which they are the 
transmitting media, it is evident that we shall soon reach a 
region which transcends the range of intellectual speculation, 
and to which the idea of distance is absolutely inappli¬ 
cable, because it implies the existence of space, which is 
merely a creation of our limited faculties. It never seems to 
enter the head of any man of science that faculties may * 
exist within us, which would enable us to extend our 
range of vision. “Granted,” says the same distinguished 
man, “ that a definite thought and a definite molecular 

* action in the brain occur simultaneously; we do not pos- 

* sess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of 

* the organ, which would enable us to pass by a process of 

* reasoning from the one to the other: the chasm between 

* the two classes of phenomena would still remain intellec¬ 
tually impassable.” Intellectually impassable — yes; but 
morally passable by those organs of which we all possess the 
rudiments, if they were developed by processes of discipline 

1 Fragments of Science, vol. ii. p. 95. 


VAGUE DEFINITIONS. 


139 


which it is the province of those engaged in the “ New Refor¬ 
mation ” to discover and apply. These have no limitations, 
either of time or space, for they are evolved by love of God, 
who is infinite, and by service of the neighbour, whose collec¬ 
tive life is eternal. It is satisfactory to have Professor Tyn¬ 
dall’s own statement of a belief in the existence and efficacy 
of spiritual insight which can grapple with problems beyond 
the scope of superficial observation, for in describing the ulti¬ 
mate problem of physics, he says that it is “ to reduce matter 
‘ by analysis to its lowest condition of divisibility, and force 

* to its simplest manifestation, and then by synthesis to con- 

* struct from these elements the world as it stands. We are 
‘ still a long way from the final solution of this problem, and 
‘ when the solution comes, it will be more one of spiritual 
‘ insight, than of actual observation .” 1 

He, too like his distinguished colleague, becomes involved 
in contradictions by the conflict which takes place between 
the forces of his spiritual and intellectual nature. For else¬ 
where he says that “ the aim and effort of science is to ex¬ 
plain the unknown in terms of the known; ” so he proceeds 
to describe an “ entity,” and tells us that it is not necessarily 
“ a free human soul.” This is a definition of one unknown 
as being not necessarily another unknown. Again he re¬ 
marks, “ All our philosophy, all our science, and all our art 
—all are the potential fires of the sun.” And again: “ What 
‘ are the core and essence of this hypothesis (physical evolu- 
‘ tion) ? Strip it naked, and you stand face to face with the 
‘ notion that, not alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular 
‘ or animal life, not alone the exquisite and wonderful mechan- 
‘ ism of the human body, but that the human mind itself, 
‘ emotion, intellect, will, and all their phenomena were once 
‘ latent in a fiery cloud.” 

Professor Huxley differs from him here, for in an attempted 
definition of vitality he compares it with “ aquosity.” After 
referring to some of the well-known properties of water, 
he remarks: “Nevertheless, we call these and many other 

* strange phenomena, the properties of water, and we do not 

* hesitate to believe that in some way or other they result 

* from the component elements of water. 

1 Fragments of Science, voL ii. p. 94. 


140 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


“We do not assume that something called ‘aquosity’ 

‘ entered into and took possession of the oxide of hydrogen as 
‘ soon as it was formed. What justification is there then for 
‘ the assumption of the existence in the living matter, which 
‘ has no representative or correlation in the not-living matter 
‘ which gave rise to it ? What better philosophical status has 
‘ vitality than ‘ aquosity * ? ” 

Those who have begun to bridge, however imperfectly, 
Professor Tyndall’s impassable chasm, know that all the pro¬ 
perties of water contain life, and what Professor Huxley calls 
aquosity is the result of vitality in its constituents elements; 
that there is no such thing as “ not-living matter,” and that 
the only difference between it and so-called living matter 
consists in a chemical transformation of the atomic life- 
particles ; that matter without life is a contradiction in 
terms; that death is merely an appearance which is con¬ 
ditioned by our senses, and that it is in reality only another 
form of life, the one set of non-sentient interlocked atoms 
continuing to act vitally, though unconsciously in surface 
nature, and the other set of sentient atoms, which have been 
set free, acting vitally and more or less consciously in sub¬ 
surface nature; and that a theory on “ the practical basis of 
life,” based on the hypothesis that the phenomenon we call 
death implies an actual extinction of the vital principle, must 
be from first to last a contradiction in terms. What is energy 
but another name for life ? and what is the “ conservation of 
energy ” but the conservation of life ? Of the two great scien¬ 
tific discoveries of the day—the origin of species, and the 
conservation of energy — the one involves a great fallacy, 
though there is a reflection of truth in it; and the other, if by 
energy is understood life, is the most fundamental truth that 
science has ever discovered. 

Professor Tyndall says: “ Believing as I do in the continuity 
‘ of nature, I cannot stop abruptly where our microscope ceases 
‘ to be of use. Here the vision of the mind supplements 
‘ authoritatively the ‘ vision of the eye.’ By an intellectual 
‘ necessity I cross the boundary of the experimental evidence, 
‘ and discover in matter . . . the promise and potency of all 
‘ terrestrial life.” There is a stronger indication of Professor 
Tyndall’s “ rudimentary organ ” in this than in anything he 


SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM. 


141 


has ever written. It is this potency which resides in the 
matter of all terrestrial life, which vivifies aquosity, and “dead” 
as well as living protoplasm, and soul, and consciousness, 
and physical phenomena, and all the other products of the 
universe, visible or invisible, surface material or subsurface 
material; and this potency we call God. Once admit that, 
and surface materialism, with atheism in its train, disappears 
from the region of philosophy; and scientific men, and pro¬ 
fessors of biology, will no longer find themselves dragged 
in opposite directions by their higher moral and lower in¬ 
tellectual natures. The sayings of these distinguished men 
and their colleagues all over Europe might be quoted ad 
infinitum ,, to prove that the more they seek to probe the 
secrets of nature, the more vague, contradictory, and shallow 
are the deductions which they extract from those secrets. 

If I have felt impelled to write strongly on this subject, it 
is because, while their discoveries are most valuable, the 
conclusions drawn from them are becoming daily more 
dangerous to the higher moral development of man. Their 
names carry great weight, their singleness of purpose, their 
devotion, indefatigable industry, and earnestness cannot fail 
to inspire the highest respect; but so long as each conclu¬ 
sion at which they arrive tends more and more to make 
surface nature its own first cause, and relegates the creative 
agency into an idealism which many of them only cling to 
because they are afraid to abandon it in the face of a world 
not yet prepared to lose its God,—so long will they continue 
unwittingly but insidiously to undermine the moral fabric 
of society, in the hope of rearing in its place an intellectual 
phantasy, which, while it tortures good men with doubt, will 
open wide the doors to social disintegration and increasing 
moral depravity. 

In saying this, however, I must make many exceptions. 
I am merely alluding to the general tendency of scientific 
research. In ‘The Unseen Universe,’ by Professors Balfour 
Stewart and Tait; in ‘Life after Death,’ by Fechner, formerly 
Professor of Physics at Leipzig; in a work called ‘Extra 
Physics,’ and in the writings of several men of science in 
America,—we have indications of that spiritual insight, with¬ 
out which all scientific investigation must be vain indeed. 


142 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


Professor Huxley says that “in whichever way we look 
at the matter, morality is based on feeling, not on religion; ” 1 
but he also tells us, in the article above quoted, that “the 
safety of morality is in science.” From the present standpoint 
of religion and science, these utterances directly contradict 
one another; but they would not if science, like morality, was 
looked at through the burning-glass of divinely illuminated 
feeling or affection. Religion could then be made rational 
enough to satisfy science, and science divine enough to be 
incorporated into religion. So soon as scientific men have 
laboured as energetically and as conscientiously with them¬ 
selves morally, as they have intellectually; and have flooded 
those mental expanses, which their studies have rendered 
receptive, with that divine scientific illumination,—so soon 
as, by arduous effort and ordeal, they shall have placed them¬ 
selves upon that moral eminence, where atomic contact can 
be established with appropriate divine force, will they solve 
their doubts as to God’s existence, His overruling providence, 
His surpassing love, and his infinite attributes. They will 
not understand Him—for who by searching can find out God? 
—but they will feel Him, and receive revelations in regard 
to Him adapted to their own condition, but often incom¬ 
municable to others. They will know more. They will un¬ 
derstand what that latent potency in matter is, by means of 
which the world is to be lifted by their efforts, combined 
with those of others, of all countries, ranks, and races, out 
of the slough of selfishness in which it is wallowing, and 
placed on that solid foundation of love; the first stone of 
which was laid on earth by Christ, acting under the direct 
operation of the divine affection, as never man did before or 
since, and especially adapted for this great work in a manner 
to which I shall presently allude. 


1 Huxley’s Hume, p. 207. 


143 




CHAPTER IX. 


RELIGIOUS ST8TEMS : THEIR USES AND ABUSES—ASPIRATION DEMANDS 
INSPIRATION—RELIGIONS EXTRACTED FROM HUSK, INSTEAD OF KER¬ 
NEL OF REVELATION — IMPOSSIBILITY OF DEMONSTRATING TO THE 
SUPERFICIAL REASON, TRUTHS DISCOVERED BY THE INNER FACULTIES 
—VARIOUS CHANNELS AND METHODS OF INSPIRATION—DEVELOPMENT 
OF SUBSURFACE CONSCIOUSNESS—MAGNETIC CONDITION OF UNSEEN 
WORLD AS RELATED TO OURS—ATTRACTION AND REPUL8ION DEPENDS 
ON MORAL ATOiilC AFFINITIES—GROUPS IN THE UNSEEN WITH WHICH 
EVERY INDIVIDUAL IN THE VISIBLE WORLD IS AFFILIATED—SO ALSO 
WITH ALL CHURCHES, RELIGIONS, AND SECTS — CHRISTIAN, BUDDHIST, 
MOSLEM, AND OTHER RELIGIOUS ORGANISATIONS EXIST IN THE UN¬ 
SEEN, AND INSPIRE THOSE HERE—HENCE DIVERGENCY OF INSPIRA¬ 
TION AND RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE. 

Tn the foregoing pages I have endeavoured to analyse the 
nature of what is called “ inspiration ” ; to apply that analysis 
to the sacred books upon which religions have been founded 
from the earliest times, and especially to the Bible; and to 
show that the systems of theology which have resulted 
from them, while they have no doubt served as a valuable 
moral agent, and were adapted to the moral and intellectual 
condition of the races, and the epochs at the time of the 
delivery of the ethical teaching and ceremonial observances 
which they enjoined, were also a fruitful source of evil, 
giving rise to a peculiar class of violent passions, and 
engendering among men bigotry and hypocrisy, spiritual 
pride, intolerance, and infidelity, by reason of the arrogance 
with which they claimed a monopoly of truth ; by the bitter¬ 
ness with which they denounced unbelievers; by the narrow 
and human view which they took of the divine attributes; 
by the mystical, vague, and contradictory character of their 
utterances; by the terrors which they flaunted before evil- 


144 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION 


doers, and the bribes they held out to the good,—thus causing 
bloody wars and relentless persecutions, and barring all pro¬ 
gress towards a better knowledge of divine truth than that 
which they presented—excepting at the cost of martyrdom 
to those who dared to attempt to advance Godward. 

It was not possible that this should be otherwise. It is 
a condition of man’s existence, that he should be engaged 
in a perpetual struggle after a knowledge of God-; and he is 
thereto impelled, in pursuance of an instinct as firmly im¬ 
planted in him as that which causes an infant to seek for 
its nourishment at its mother’s breast. This craving after 
the Deity is universal, excepting in the still happily very 
small class, which is confined to Christendom, which is 
suffering from mental indigestion, and in which exclusively 
intellectual development is rapidly crushing out all moral 
aspiration, and committing suicide by the unwholesome 
strain. For, though science may not yet realise it, the 
negation of the Deity, and the adoption by man of sur¬ 
face matter as his origin, would inevitably, sooner or later, 
destroy his sympathy for his fellows, were it not that no 
amount of metaphysical rigmarole—though it may do much 
harm to the few—will ever extinguish the yearning after God 
of the many. Men may crave after matter, and even go 
so far as to eat the clay of which they think they are made, 
like some South American tribes, but they will never instil 
this unnatural appetite into the world at large. 

It is, then, to this insatiable longing, that the world owes its 
blind attachment to its religions ; but inasmuch as the men 
who thus crave are nevertheless full of imperfection, and of 
evil passions of all sorts, as well as of aspiration after God, 
and of an instinct of brotherly love, their inspirations partake 
of the prevalent character of the period and of the race, and 
although more or less charged with divine truth, are also 
heavily charged with moral imperfection. For the inspired 
teacher, though in advance of his time, was nevertheless a 
reflection of it. The misfortune has always been that he 
could not convey to his followers the divine life which had 
charged him with the message he delivered, and which had 
raised him to his high office, without tincturing it with his 
personal imperfections. 


THE UNIVERSAL INSPIRATION. 


145 ! 


While the religious aspiration was powerful enough to de¬ 
mand a revelation with such persistence that it was obtained, 
it was not powerful enough to keep men up to the spirit of it. 
They treasured the husk and worshipped it, principally quar¬ 
relled over it, and appropriated it from each other, because 
they considered it a sort of talisman to avert danger, and 
ensure safety; but with the exception of those who are called 
“ mystics,” they never tried to get at the kernel; and even 
these, as I shall presently show, only partially succeeded, 
and kept what they knew so buried in secrecy, that the 
world was none the wiser for it. For this, however, the 
mystics are not to be blamed; for in its then condition the 
world was not ready for it, and now humanity has passed 
into a new phase, to which mysticism is not appropriate. 
It is from this husk instead of from the kernel, then, that 
religious systems have been extracted—upon it the Churches 
have been built, and with it society has been fed. No won¬ 
der that the results have been what we have shown them 
to be! But the time has come for the prodigal to turn away 
from this unwholesome diet; for the husk has ceased to satisfy 
his awakened religious instinct, and he craves food more 
suited to his spiritual digestion—food not administered to 
him, in the first instance, by inspired prophet or seer, in 
the second by inspired Church, and in the third by semi- 
inspired priest, but drawn from the richer storehouse of his 
own inspiration, and his deep inner experience and conscious¬ 
ness. The day of exclusively inspired men, and exclusively 
inspired Churches has passed away. The universal inspira¬ 
tion is about to descend upon all who earnestly seek for it; 
the day of that ‘ Comforter ’—or, more literally, ‘ Helper * 
—which was promised, and which will guide those who re¬ 
ceive it into all truth. 

If, therefore, I am abuut to enter upon a series of what 
may appear dogmatic statements, as being the result of what 
I believe this ‘ Helper * has taught me, I shall endeavour to 
do so in all humility — conscious that they must be very 
imperfect; for, as I have already said, knowledge thus derived, 
must always partake of the taint of the individual through 
whom it comes—it being morally as well as physically 
impossible for any human being to purge himself from it; 

K 


146 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


and for this very simple reason—that .he forms an integral 
part of a great diseased whole. 

The popular theological idea, that by the action of the Spirit 
of God a man can become actually dissevered spiritually from 
his fellows, and elevated above them by a “ discrete degree”— 
to use Swedenborgian phraseology—on to another moral plat¬ 
form, is a stupendous fallacy, the nature of which none knew 
better than Christ, when he was incorporated into the earth- 
malady. Therefore He said, “ How am I straitened until 
these things be accomplished ! ” If a man is full of scrofula, 
there is not a speck of his organism which is free from taint; 
and so it is with the world, and all that is in it—if one 
member suffers, all the members must suffer with it. More¬ 
over, any attempt of a man to disconnect himself from his 
fellows in the hour of their need, by rising higher, would be 
so selfish, that the very effort would cause him to sink, instead 
of to rise. It is not, therefore, because I imagine myself to 
be any better than others, or more favoured than others, or 
expect to be saved more than others, or, so far as I am aware, 
have any personal feeling in the matter, that I enter upon 
this task, but simply because I feel it to be imposed upon 
me as a sacred duty, from which I dare not shrink. 

If I am obliged to make statements dogmatically, which are 
incapable of proof by a process of reasoning, it is because, 
when one is absolutely certain of a fact, it is difficult to speak 
of it otherwise than dogmatically, even if it is not suscep¬ 
tible of proof. Thus I may be conscious of having pain in 
some part of my body in consequence of a remedy which I 
had applied, and state it as an absolute fact; though it may be 
quite impossible for me to prove it except by saying to those 
who doubt me, “ Apply the same remedy, and you will feel 
the same pain.” And as a certain class of spiritual experi¬ 
ences are either emotional, psychical, or physical, and not 
intellectual, they are not susceptible of intellectual demon¬ 
stration, and, in fact, may not be demonstrable by emotional, 
psychical, or physical evidence—much depending in that case 
on temperament or organic conditions. Thus one person is a 
powerful magnetiser and another incapable of magnetising, 
but very susceptible to magnetic influence. 

Scientific men who are now dealing with forces which are 


DYNASPHERIC FORCE. 


147 


inexplicable to them, in consequence of their capricious char¬ 
acter and irregular manifestation—should have no difficulty 
in admitting that when one is dealing with these same, or 
analogous forces, in a far more subtle region of nature, one is 
neither bound to explain their action, nor to guarantee any 
similarity of result in every case. The most one can do is to 
give the conclusions at which he has arrived, as the outcome 
of experience; and having put others on the same track, leave 
them to work out their own results. The great difficulty 
which presents itself in the endeavour to describe these ex¬ 
periences, is the poorness of the language, which does not pro¬ 
vide terms for the elucidation of them. Any attempt to con¬ 
vey the nature of the conclusions arrived at, must suffer from 
this cause. Moreover, as comparatively few persons have en¬ 
tered into conditions where their subsurface consciousness has 
been at all developed, many statements which are made, must 
necessarily appear fantastic and scarcely comprehensible. 

I have already used the illustration of Keely’s Motor to 
show how dynaspheric force can operate on external substance, 
and the tremendous potentiality which it possesses. It is 
this same interatomic energy—of which science has now dis¬ 
covered the existence, but which is itself transmitted by means 
of atoms—that produces the phenomena of hypnotism, tele¬ 
pathy, mediumship, and the abnormal manifestations which 
characterise occultism and oriental magic, and which is called, 
in the language of the Esoterists, “astral fluid.” It is this 
same force, in a still higher development, which is projected 
from invisible beings into the organisms of persons still in 
the flesh, by various processes which I shall presently de¬ 
scribe, and which enables them, under certain conditions, to 
interweave their organisms with ours in a manner inconceiv¬ 
ably intimate, and by acting directly on our nerve-centres, to 
affect us sensationally in a manner indescribable to those who 
have not undergone the experience, but unmistakable to those 
who have. It is to this dynaspheric contact that the hysteria 
and convulsions that so often attend religious exaltation and 
revivals are due, which are generally supposed by the en¬ 
thusiasts who witness them, to be the operation of the Holy 
Ghost. 

Assuming, then, that conditions can be reached by the 


148 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


interlocking of the dynaspheric atoms of those who are in¬ 
visible, with those of persons still in this life, especially in 
the case where pneumatic as well as psychic interlocking has 
preceded the decease of one of the parties; and that it is 
possible for a commingling of ideas to take place, in which 
those of the invisible partner shall largely predominate, 
though they will have to take form through the channel pro¬ 
vided for it in the moral expanses and mental processes of 
the living partner; and assuming, further, that the invisible 
partner was possessed of a powerful and well-trained intel¬ 
lect, and was developed morally to a very exceptional degree, 
—it is evident that, being released from the trammels of the 
flesh, the faculty of insight and observation into natural 
phenomena of such a person would result in knowledge of a 
deeply interesting and valuable kind. It would not be in¬ 
fallible, for the highest angels of which we have any know¬ 
ledge are progressing, and progress implies imperfection ; but 
it might contain certain truths which are absolutely vital to 
our own progress, and warnings by which terrible and un¬ 
known disasters may be averted. So far as we know, no 
prophets or seers have had any other channels of inspiration 
than those thus provided by the invisibles of our own uni¬ 
verse, who are in immediate rapport with those above them, 
and so on up the series ; and any claim to a higher inspiration 
is the result of ignorance or conceit on the part of those claim¬ 
ing to be inspired. The value of the inspiration must always 
be conditioned on the moral status of the recipient here, and 
of the recipient in the unseen part of our world; and as 
there are those who have risen to very lofty and pure states, 
what they transmit cannot be other than lofty and pure—in¬ 
deed the difficulty they feel is to reduce their inspiration to 
the level of our faculty of reception and apprehension; the 
visible side of the world not being in a condition to receive 
any inspiration higher than it can obtain from the invisible 
side of it. Why, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, these 
are either so mystical, or so unpractical, or so vague, or so vul¬ 
gar as to be of very little use, I have explained in an earlier 
chapter. 

In order, however, to understand what follows, it is neces¬ 
sary again to revert to the moral, social, and intellectual 


THE UNSEEN WORLD. 


149 


composition of that subsurface or supersensuous world which 
forms part of our own. The magnetic conditions there being 
altogether different from what they are here, in consequence 
of the absence of any of those gross molecules, which we 
call ‘material/ the functions of the supersensuous physical 
bodies of those there can scarcely be conceived of by us; 
and any attempt to describe the relation they bear to in¬ 
tellect and emotion, would be like trying to describe red to 
a man who is colour-blind. Suffice it to say, that both the 
physical and mental systems are, far more than they are here, 
absolutely dominated and controlled by the emotional, which, 
operating through the will, projects the powerful forces which 
are stored in it. The result is, that attraction and repulsion, 
as between individuals, act infinitely more powerfully there 
than they do here; and as locality there is the result of the 
moral conditions which create it, the place where people are, 
means the moral state or condition in which they are. Time 
in the same way is calculated by the progression of states, 
neither time nor space having any existence as we understand 
them here. It results from this, that people are all either 
irresistibly attracted or repelled according to their moral 
affinities; but these in turn depend upon the moral and 
intellectual condition in which they were at the time of 
leaving this earth, with reference to the societies in the other, 
through which, by atomic correlation, they derived their life, ■ 

. To these on leaving this world they are at once and irre^ 
sistibly drawn. As, however, impermanency is, as Buddha 
so strenuously and earnestly insisted, the law of the universe, 
it is not to remain with them always, for the individuals 
of which these societies are composed, in obedience to the 
powerful magnetic conditions which prevail, are constantly 
•changing, and passing into higher or lower conditions, as the 
•case may be. It follows from this that every individual here 
is affiliated, so to speak, with a group who correspond to 
his moral and rational condition, and from whom he draws 
his life. It is a curious reflection that materialists here 
derive their inspiration that there is nothing beyond the 
matter of which their senses are cognisant, from the materi¬ 
alists who hold the same view there, and who consider that 
there is no matter outside of that of which their bodies are 


150 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


composed, and which they hold to be the origin of life. This 
view having once impregnated the minds of those who are 
affiliated to them here, the latter are also unable to conceive 
of any matter outside of them, and which is not sensuous. 

In the same way, all races and religions have their cor¬ 
responding races and religions from which they draw their 
life. Thus the very lowest types—such, for instance, as the 
Bosjesmen of South Africa, or the Vedas of Ceylon, or the 
aborigines of Australia—are physically sustained through, 
and morally inspired by, those who have passed from this- 
world, and who belong to the same races; for their atomic 
condition would render it impossible for them to draw life, 
intelligence, or moral consciousness from the highest earthly 
human types, with whom their atomic elements have no 
affinity. Thus there are races in the unseen world who have 
not yet developed there, as there are races in the natural 
world who have not yet developed here, according to our 
notions of development. This is due to the fact of the time 
not having yet come for the efflorescence of the peculiar- 
spiritual type which they represent, in which the intellectual 
side of their nature is subordinate to the emotional; as, for 
instance, in the case of the African races, whose moral evolu¬ 
tion, when it once begins, will progress with vast rapidity. 
These races will not suffer in the evolutionary process from, 
having lived so long in a state of barbarism, and from having 
been preserved until now from the blighting influence of what 
we call “ civilisation.” 

The law of the affinity of atoms governs the relations of 
the two sections of the universe, and the transmission and 
interchange of life between them. Thus the good of each 
race, according to their quality of moral consciousness and 
intelligence, act upon their own race on earth to enlighten 
them, while the bad endeavour to influence them for evil, 
all being atomically interlocked together psychically, and 
thus possessed by good and evil people, who, to distinguish 
them from those in the flesh, we call “ spirits.” 

It is the same with the religions, Churches, and sects 
Their influence is very powerful, because it is always more or 
less organised. The most powerful organisations of this kind 
are the Buddhist, the Moslem, and the Bomanist. Of theses 


RELIGIONS IN THE UNSEEN. 


151 


the Buddhist is the most powerful. It owes its strength to 
its antiquity, to its numbers, and to the mighty stores bf force 
it has garnered up, by the practice of religious asceticism 
during 2500 years—to its profound knowledge of the laws of 
that force, and the methods of its conservation and applica¬ 
tion—and to the potency of its spirit of self-sacrifice, which, 
although misdirected, renders it by far the most powerful 
spiritual agency which now exists of a special kind; the best 
evidence of which is, that it has but to put forth a little of 
its long-latent energy, and it can affect the most mighty, 
educated, and civilised community in Christendom, far more 
powerfully than that society, with all its missionary enter¬ 
prise, can affect it. I do not mean in the number of so-called 
converts, but in their quality. 

The Moslem is the next most powerful society, because 
there is far more faith in its adherents than there is among 
the Romanists, the large proportion of whom, who believe, are 
women or peasants. It is also far more in sympathy with 
savage tribes; and the religion itself being of a debased, and, 
at the same time, fanatical type, can more rapidly come into 
atomic relation with them than Christians can. It therefore 
makes more converts annually than any other religion of 
the present day; though, as these are among the Central 
African tribes, its operations in this direction are little 
known. 1 

The Romanist society derives its strength from its admir¬ 
able organisation, its unscrupulous methods, and its immense 
prestige. The internal corruption of the Greek Church, the 
degradation of its priesthood, its race limitations, and the 
social and political elements which are combining against it, 
render its invisible organisation much less powerful than 
that of Rome. 

It is the most encouraging sign of the times, that there is 
no religious society in the unseen part of our universe which 
is weakening with the same rapidity as the Anglican. This 
arises from the fact of its defective organisation, of the wide 
differences of opinion which obtain within its pale, and which 
prevent all cohesion of the numbers who profess to belong 

1 Since the above was written, attention has been called to this fact by 
Canon Taylor and Mr Bos worth Smith. 


152 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


to it here, but who abandon it immediately they leave earth- 
life—for the same reasons for external conformity do nob 
exist in the unseen which do here—and also from the defec¬ 
tion of that immense class of truth-seekers who desert it here, 
because they are in atomic relation with many who have 
abandoned it there, and whose reasons for having done so, are 
so forcibly projected into the minds of their earthly friends, 
that these latter at once follow their example. 

At the same time, the identical differences continue to pre¬ 
vail among those who cling to it in the invisible world, which 
do here. There are those who, not having found the bliss they 
anticipated by an act of faith here, still trust to the merits of 
the blood of Christ to procure it for them there; and others 
who, for the same reason, rely on the promise made to Peter, 
as to the rock upon which the Church was to be built, and on 
the efficacy of the Eucharist; and so with every sect, down 
to that small and worthy body the Christadelphians, they all 
draw their life and inspiration from the group that belongs 
to them, and that to which they belong. A special peculiarity 
attaches to the latter sect alluded to, because they derive their 
inspiration from a class of persons in the unseen, who imagine 
themselves to be dead. This is not an uncommon form of 
hallucination ; and Swedenborg gives some singular instances 
of persons who were convinced that they would not live again 
until the resurrection, and refused to rise from their beds, 
which they believed to be their graves. The delusion common 
to some people that death is tantamount to annihilation, and 
that which possesses others, that there is no life after death 
until the judgment-day, is one which those who have died 
under its spell, and therefore continue to cherish in the un¬ 
seen, project unconsciously to themselves into the minds of 
mortals here, because they remain fixed in it. Those who 
arrive at this conclusion from their interpretation of certain 
texts in the Bible, do so from a mistaken conception of the 
event which is called the resurrection, the nature of which 
the apostles themselves did not clearly understand, or they 
would have stated it in terms which would have avoided the 
divergencies of opinion which exist among Christians on the 
subject. The “resurrection”, does, in fact, express in one 
word that recombination of atoms, which will be rendered 


THE RESURRECTION. 


153 


possible as the result of the new development of dynaspheric 
force now beginning to operate in the surface world, and 
which certainly could not operate were it not for the exist¬ 
ence and active labours of those very beings who are to rise 
again. By these labours, they will, with the co-operation 
of human beings here, so assimilate the conditions of the 
visible with the invisible, that the moment will finally arrive 
—it may be more or less catastrophically—when we shall 
once again see those who have been laid in their graves, 
living and moving amongst us as human beings, while our 
own organisms will have undergone such a mighty change 
that they will partake of the same nature, and death will 
have been swallowed up in victory. This is the dawn of the 
restitution of all things, a certainty in the dim future, but of 
the times and the seasons knoweth no man. 

It should always be remembered that those from whom 
this inspiration comes are, as a rule, those who have most 
recently “joined the majority,” because of course they are 
in the most intimate atomic rapport with those they left 
behind; in fact, except in the case of a direct blood-tie, 
which creates a special atomic relation, it is impossible for 
those who have long since passed away, to establish atomic 
relations with a person on this earth, excepting through the 
•channel of an organism which had established such atomic 
relations with that person previous to external dissolution. 

The Hindoo, Jewish, and Parsee religions deserve a word of 
notice; the first, because it is the only religion now extant 
which has existed since prehistoric times—a fact which bears 
sufficient testimony to the extraordinary spiritual energy 
which must have launched it into the world, through the per¬ 
sonalities of Kama and Khrishna, who, although they have 
■come to be regarded as mythical personages, were none the 
less men, and the recipients of a divine wisdom superior to 
.anything that has existed since, with one exception, and 
whose work remains the most stupendous religious monument 
of which we have any record, debased, degraded, and frag¬ 
mentary though it be now, and though the subsurface Hin- 
dooism which has sustained it through so many thousands of 
years, has long been undergoing a process of gradual but 
sure disintegration and decay. 


154 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


The Jewish and Parsee societies have many points in com¬ 
mon. Among: the great teachers of the world, none have had 
more marked personalities than Moses and Zoroaster. The 
religious life which they infused into the societies they taught, 
has resisted in a remarkable way attack both from within 
and from without. It has survived spiritual treachery and 
worldly persecution, and has been powerful enough to bind 
and hold together, by its internal atomic tie, each of these two- 
sets of wanderers over the earth’s surface. They have had a 
peculiar and trying ordeal to pass through, because a peculiar 
destiny awaits them. The special characteristic of the unseen 
societies of which they form the visible portion, is toughness- 
combined with flexibility. It is this pliable obstinacy which 
has enabled them to weather the storms through which they 
have passed, and which is now beginning to take an altered 
shape in the unseen societies preparatory to a new develop¬ 
ment, which need not involve their destruction, but which 
must involve their transformation. In this they will differ 
from all the other religions to which I have alluded. The 
reason of this is that with them alone to name the race is to- 
name the religion. This tribal characteristic, which is iden¬ 
tified with their respective religions, operates in a special 
manner in the relations which the Jewish and Parsee com¬ 
munities in the invisible part of the universe occupy towards- 
the rest of its inhabitants; and when the religious and social 
cataclysm which is now beginning there, culminates, they 
will not be affected by it in the same way as the other races 
and religions; but it is not given to me to know any details 
in regard to this. All that is certain is, that as'religions have 
waxed and waned in times of yore, until nothing was left of 
them but inscribed monuments, or engraved tablets, or mytho¬ 
logical legends and poems, so all existing religions are doomed 
again to wane, and indeed are waning now, and from their 
dibris the quickened life of humanity will burst forth, to the 
realisation of a new and higher ideal than the most ardent 
disciples of the greatest teachers ever deemed possible. 

As to the rapidity of the growth of this new development, 
no one can predict; for that depends upon man’s exercise of 
his own free will, in fostering and co-operating with the forces- 
that must use him as their channel of operation; but it will 


ATOMIC AFFINITY. 


155 - 


aid him immensely to give his will an impetus in the right 
direction, if he is made aware of some of the laws that govern, 
that force. The most important of these is that it can only 
act through a chain of atomic particles specially adapted for 
it. This law was apparently unknown to seers, who have-, 
imagined themselves in direct communication with the pro¬ 
phets and sages of a bygone period, and notably with Christ. 
This was the case with Swedenborg, whose splendid intro¬ 
missions into the unseen, equal, if they do not surpass, those 
of any other seer, and palpitate with divine truth, and who* 
was doubtless convinced that he conversed face to face with. 
Christ; but this was not possible, and for this reason. 

It is well known to science that in the natural body all 
the atomic particles undergo periodical change in the course 
of a certain number of years. The same holds good with 
the spiritual body, only there is not the same periodicity 
as in natural time; but the atoms of a person who has 
passed into the inner world are perpetually changing, as the 
person rises or falls morally, and so at last lose all direct 
affinity with persons still in the flesh. In the case of those 
whose moral condition here is very advanced, they can still 
remain attached atomically to those who are rising upward,, 
for a longer period than persons of a lower type; but sooner 
or later their hold becomes attenuated, and they either follow 
them, or are attached to a more recently deceased organism 
in the unseen, suited to their moral condition. In any case*, 
it would be impossible for a person here to be so attached to- 
one who had passed away—say, more than a hundred years 
ago—or beyond the extreme limit of natural old age; but it 
would be perfectly possible to be indirectly attached to such, 
a one through an intermediary who had passed away more 
recently, and thuss could form the link between the two. 
In that case the contact would seem direct, though in point of' 
fact it would not be; and whatever apparent communication 
took place between the two, would be heavily charged with 
the individuality of the intermediary. 

When it comes to a question of contact between a human 
personality and the personality of Christ, the intermediaries. 
would be more numerous, though the effect upon the human 
being here would still be that of direct contact with Christ.. 


156 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


Were the communications not so tempered, the potency of 
them would be such that no man could receive them and live, 
—even if he could survive, he possesses no faculties which 
would enable him to comprehend them. They therefore 
reach him exactly adapted to his moral state, and the 
•quality of his internal faculty; transforming their character 
by new atomic combinations with the atomic elements of 
•each intermediary on the downward scale; and in each case 
taking up some of the quality of those atoms, and finally 
reaching the human being in a form which his own idiosyn¬ 
crasies enable him to assimilate. Had Swedenborg, for in¬ 
stance, been born and bred a Jew, he might have equally 
supposed he saw and talked with Moses. His “ memorable 
relations,” which were representations projected on his mind 
by those with whom he was in sympathy and atomic attach¬ 
ment, would in that case all have been adapted to the Jewish 
instead of the Christian theology; he might have been per¬ 
fectly honest, and yet have conveyed a totally erroneous im¬ 
pression of the relations which actually subsist now between 
Moses and Christ. For the same reason, it would be almost 
impossible now for a strong believer in Swedenborg, whose 
internal faculties were thus opened, to see anything but a 
Swedenborgian view of things. 

When, at spiritual stances, Newton, Kepler, Aristotle, and 
other ancient sages profess to appear, and write their names 
as an evidence of their identity, it is absolutely certain that 
it is not Newton, Kepler, or Aristotle at all, but a lately 
deceased individual, probably of a very low type, or the 
medium himself, if he happens to be a dishonest man. 

As human relations with the unseen have become much 
closer during the last half-century, in consequence of a cer¬ 
tain alteration which has taken place in the gross external 
molecules of the human organism, groups have been formed 
in the unseen which concentrate their energies upon individ¬ 
uals selected here, whose organic conditions render them 
appropriate to psychic or pneumatic-psychic impact or im¬ 
pression, as the case may be. Hence, we have mediumistic 
centres of various groups of spiritualists, with varying forms 
of communication, directing or misdirecting their votaries, 
according to the fancy or belief of their unseen dominating 


SPIRITUAL INSANITY. 


15 T 


group; and we have impressional writers controlled or in¬ 
spired by such groups, and endeavouring to form societies* 
which are daily increasing in number, with more or less 
occult or mystic pretensions, all of whom, no doubt, sin¬ 
cerely believe that they have been furnished with a key ta 
the mysteries, and all of whom are conscious of very distinct 
guiding and direction, which the more orthodox and devout 
naturally ascribe to Providence. In regard to the group 
under whose inspiration I am writing this, I only offer the- 
impression which they have conveyed to me in the pages of 
this book, as the purest and loftiest revelation which it has 
been in my power to obtain, the value of which can only be 
estimated by those whose inner perceptions have been opened 
by such a long moral disciplinary process as may constitute 
them judges on such an important question. 

It is not to be wondered at that persons whose internal 
faculties are open — and these are increasing every day — 
and who imagine themselves to be in direct personal com¬ 
munication with Christ, should ultimately arrive at very 
exalted ideas of their own spiritual function and general 
moral condition—though this cannot in any manner be said 
of Swedenborg. Herein lies the terrible danger of an opening 
of the supersensuous faculty, beyond the stage where the 
moral nature is able to bear the strain. The man who thus 
finds himself lifted, as he supposes, to the highest regions of 
our unseen world, and made a companion on equal terms 
with its denizens, soon imagines himself to be one of them, 
and their vicegerent on earth. He becomes in his own eyes 
infallible, and incapable of sin, and invested with supreme 
dominion; his “ proprium,” to use a Swedenborgian term, be¬ 
comes inflated, and consequently a magnet which attracts a 
very powerful class of influences, in whom pride, tyranny, 
ambition, hypocrisy, and deceit, the lust of money and the 
lusts of the flesh, rule supreme—and who in turn use their 
intermediaries to take possession of their victim, until he 
finally becomes spiritually insane,—of such a one it may 
be truly said, that his last state is worse than his first. Nor 
is the danger to himself alone, for he becomes a channel of 
enormously potential magnetism of a virulently poisonous 
kind, which enables him to control hypnotically those who 


158 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


may have unwarily come under his influence, attracted by 
the beauty of many of his utterances, which may often still 
-continue full of the majesty and force of inspiration. To 
-euch he still appears an angel of light — the only chosen 
medium for divine truth on earth to men, and the pivotal 
•centre of all humanity. 

There is no doctrine attended with greater danger than 
this one, which involves the necessity of a pivotal man, 
through whom alone God can act upon the human race. It 
was invented by the early Church, is illustrated in Rome, 
■and has since been acted upon by others. It is a doctrine 
which casts its magnetic fetters round the affections, the 
will, and the understanding, and makes abject slaves of those 
who yield themselves to it. The whole tendency of the 
divinely vital descent now occurring, is to develop the entire 
nature of man, morally, rationally, and physically; to eman¬ 
cipate him from the bondage of Churches and of men; to 
make him his own pivot, standing erect in the light of his 
•own divine illumination, and lifting his arms Godward, in¬ 
spired by the dignity of his own aspiration—neither borne 
into the unseen in the swaddling-clothes of a sect, nor 
driven thither in a chain-gang under the cruel lash of a slave- 
driver, nor projected into it upon the fagot of an auto da fL 


159 


t 


CHAPTER X. 


FORCE INCONCEIVABLE EXCEPT IN CONNECTION WITH MATTER AS A 
TRANSMITTING MEDIUM—THE PSYCHE OR “ SPIRITUAL BODY,” THE 
ABODE OF THE PNEUMA OR “ SPIRIT ”—CHRIST’S BIRTH AND DEATH 
ESTABLISHED A NEW ATOMIC RELATION BETWEEN THE SEEN AND 
THE UNSEEN—THE ORGANISMS OF THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN MAN 
DESCRIBED—THEIR RELATION TO EACH OTHER, AND THE METHODS 
OF THEIR INTERACTION—THE PHENOMENA OF SPIRITUALISM, OCCULT¬ 
ISM, HYPNOTISM, TELEPATHY, FAITH-HEALING, AND THOUGHT-READ¬ 
ING ACCOUNTED FOR AND EXPLAINED UNDER THE OPERATION OF 
NATURAL LAW—PHENOMENA UNRELIABLE AS A GUIDE TO TRUTH— 
CRAVING FOR IT UNWHOLESOME AND ATTENDED WITH DANGER— 
INSANITY EXPLAINED — PHILOSOPHY OF DEATH—DISEASE NOT AN 
UNMIXED EVIL — POPULAR IDEAS OF HEAVEN, HELL, PURGATORY, 
ERRONEOUS — MAGNETIC CONTACT ESTABLISHED BETWEEN CHRIST 
AND THE WORLD, THE CHANNEL OF A NEW MORAL RECONSTRUCTIVE 
POTENCY — THE HUMAN AND SPIRITUAL MAGNETIC BATTERIES NOW 
CHARGED, AND THE CONSUMMATION AT HAND—QUALITIES REQUIRED 
IN THOSE WHO WOULD CO-OPERATE IN BRINGING IT ABOUT. 

From the foregoing remarks it will be seen that, as it is im¬ 
possible to conceive of force as disconnected from matter, and 
that as all matter of which science is surfacely cognisant 
is in motion, dynaspheric force—which is the transmitting 
energy of the will, the emotions, and the intellect—must also 
be in motion, and must differ in quality, as light, heat, elec¬ 
tricity, and other forces, of which w T e are sensuously cognisant, 
differ from each other ; and this brings us to a consideration 
of the nature of the bodies which people inhabit after they 
have shuffled off the gross external covering which formed 
their fleshly tabernacle. St Paul calls these “spiritual bodies,” 1 
.and in fact that is the name generally given to them by 

1 1 Corinthians xv. 44. 


160 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


non-materialists ; but few Biblical students form any definite 
idea of the terms “ soul ” and “ spirit,” or “ psyche ” and 
“pneuma,” which are so constantly employed in the New' 
Testament, and of the wide distinction which exists between 
them, or they would haVe clearer notions than seem to obtain 
at present, of the condition of those who have passed through 
the phase of their earthly existence. The masses who derive 
their ideas on these subjects from pictorial representations, 
believe in an unknown cloudy region, inhabited by sexless 
diaphanous beings, with wings and harps, whom they call 
angels, and whom they do not connect directly with this 
world; but beyond that, their minds are a blank upon the 
subject. 

Now, in order to have definite ideas, we must begin by 
attaching definite meanings to words, and understand the 
precise signification we connect with the terms soul and 
spirit. The expression “ spiritual body ” is an accurate defini¬ 
tion of soul, only so far as it conveys the idea that the psyche 
or soul is the abode of the pneuma or spirit—in other words, 
the psyche is composed of those atomic particles which form 
the outer covering or body of the pneuma, and without 
which the transmission of pneumatic force would be impos¬ 
sible, though they may transmit it in very different ways. 

The word pneuma is used in several separate senses in 
the Bible. In one of these it means the human spirit of 
man, whether embodied or disembodied. In another, the 
divine influx or afflatus—it is then called “ a spirit,” or “ the 
spirit of God.” In another signification, it applies to the 
divine feminine, when it is called “ a holy spirit,” or “ the 
spirit which is holy.” 1 

The translators not having recognised any such difference,, 
and having utterly ignored the particles, and made an arbi¬ 
trary and capricious use of capitals, the only way of appre¬ 
ciating the full force of the distinction is by reading the 
original Greek text. 

At present we are considering the pneuma only as applied 
to man. Thus an intimate fusion or interlocking of pneu¬ 
matic atoms between a person here, and one who has lately 
passed from this earth, has only quite recently become pos-- 
1 See Note in Appendix to Chapter xxi. 


THE NEW SPIRITUAL POTENCY. 161 

sible. The potency thus derived does, in fact, furnish man 
with the moral energy which he has lacked hitherto, and 
which will enable him to give practical effect to his highest 
aspirations, until now impossible; to overturn the false sys¬ 
tems of science, religion, and society which prevail, and to 
build upon their ruins a fabric patterned after a divine model. 

It is an event more pregnant with consequences of the 
deepest import to humanity, than anything that has happened 
on earth since the appearance of Christ upon it, for it alone 
renders His coming a second time possible; and it was to 
establish this new link between the visible and the invisible 
regions of our universe that He was born into the world, and 
suffered death by violence. 

It is to indicate how this was rendered possible for man 
by that event, and by what process it can be achieved, that 
this book has been written. 

Hitherto the loftiest communications, and the most power¬ 
ful displays of celestial spiritual energy which the world has 
seen, have resulted, not from identic pneumatic vibration of 
atoms, but from pneumatic vibratory combinations of these 
atoms of an irregular kind. These have been exhibited in 
the prophecies and visions of seers in old time, in a few rare 
instances up to the present day, and in a very special and 
orderly manner on the occasion of the phenomenon which 
occurred shortly after Christ’s departure from earth, when, 
as the result of the close atomic affinity which He had 
established with His disciples, the great outpouring of spir¬ 
itual energy, known as the descent of the Holy Ghost, took 
place. This divine force is constantly alluded to in the New 
Testament; but the word Swafjus is usually rendered “ power ” 
by the translators, and its real meaning, which is “ force,” is 
thus weakened. 

In order to make this clear, the reader must bear in mind 
that the psyche is, in fact, a body, differing only from ours in 
the composition of the atoms of which it consists, but other¬ 
wise exactly resembling ours in its physical construction. 
We call it the soul, but it is not the less a body, of which our 
outer body is the outer shell or covering. It is separated 
from the spirit, or pneuma, which resides within it, by a 
medium or substance in the nature of an insulator or dielec- 

L 


162 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


trie, which is nevertheless capable of transmitting the vibra¬ 
tions of the pneumatic atoms within to the psychic atoms 
without, and, combining with these, to radiate upon human 
beings. In the case of the earth-man there is a human body 
outside his psychic dielectric, encompassed by a third dielec¬ 
tric, which Eeichenbach called his odylic sphere—the func¬ 
tions of which I shall explain presently. I will endeavour to 
make my meaning more clear by a diagram. 

Spiritual Man. Natural Man. 



The three human dielectrics are all permeable to the atomic 
forces which radiate from spiritual beings, in varying degrees. 
In the case of the highest inspiration formerly known, and to 
which we owe sacred writings, the human dielectrics not only 
almost lost their insulating properties, but became powerful 
conductors of atomic vibration from the spiritual pneuma to 
the human pneuma, but this was unaccompanied by any 
interlocking of the respective pneumatic atoms. 

By the absence of interlocking, I mean that no such har¬ 
mony was established between the two as to render the 
atomic vibration identical. It is from contact of this sort 
that we obtain impressional writing and preaching that is 
not purely automatic. Its character and value must always 
depend upon the harmony which exists between the vibration 
of the pneumatic atoms, as well as upon the purity and eleva¬ 
tion of the inspiring pneuma. What is called “ genius ” is the 
result of pneumatic contact of this sort; and poets and artists 
in particular must be conscious of the inspirations that pro¬ 
ceed from it, and of times when ideas suddenly present them¬ 
selves, projected from some invisible source into the brain. 

As both the human and the spiritual dielectrics differ in¬ 
finitely in their capacity of conductivity, there is an infinite 


DANGERS OF MEDIUMSHIP. 


163 


variety in the intellectual and moral characteristics of every 
human being, the great majority of whom are unconscious of 
any radiation of spiritual influence upon them, and find it 
-exceedingly difficult to believe that contact of this sort is 
possible. Where there is cerebral disturbance, the external 
or body dielectric is violently ruptured, and insanity or mania 
of some sort results—its nature depending upon the nature of 
the disturbance, and of the infesting influence which takes 
advantage of it, and other causes. 

In the case of the grosser forms of spiritualistic manifesta¬ 
tion and mediumship, the two outer dielectrics are powerful 
conductors, while the pneumatic or inner one generally, but 
not always, retains its insularity. In this case the spiritual 
pneumatic atoms, taking up the psychic atoms, impinge 
violently upon the human psyche of the medium, who for 
the time being is completely dominated by them, or, in the 
language of spiritualists, “ under control.” In proportion as 
the two outer dielectrics are permeable to this impact, is 
he what is called “a powerful medium for physical mani¬ 
festations ; ” and in proportion as his pneumatic dielectric is 
permeable, are the results of value. The reason why they 
scarcely ever are of value, is because the control of his psyche 
by the spiritual influence, destroys all rational balance between 
it and his pneuma, which thus becomes open to fantastic im¬ 
pressions, often leading to insanity; while this control of 
both body and psyche, being utterly disorderly, sooner or 
later depletes the organism of vitality, destroys the nerves, 
and results in many painful forms of mental and bodily 
malady. The cultivation, therefore, of the mediumistic 
faculty is in the highest degree to be deprecated. It is of 
little practical use, and involves bodily and spiritual danger 
of the most serious kind. 

The function of the external human dielectric, or odylic 
sphere, is the transmission between human beings of the 
sentiments of sympathy, antipathy, and other emotions de¬ 
pending on the affinity of the atoms, or the reverse, and 
on the accord with which they vibrate. In some cases 
they are peculiarly subject to spiritual agency, as, for in¬ 
stance, when they are projected in the human form of their 
living owner before the gaze of another living man, forming. 


164 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


with the atoms of his dielectric, a presentation visible to him 
alone, sometimes in dreams, sometimes in waking states. In 
the same way apparitions of persons who have passed into the- 
other world are formed out of their psychic dielectrics, and 
are presented visually to persons in the flesh who happen to 
be in appropriate dielectric conditions. 

The reason why phenomena of this kind, as well as those 
called spiritualistic, are so capricious and irregular in their 
manifestation, is because they depend entirely on the quality 
of the human dielectric. Where there is scepticism in the 
human pneuma or inmost thought of the man, antipathetie 
atomic combinations are formed in his two external dielec¬ 
trics, and interpose a hostile atomic element which encom¬ 
passes the medium, and forms a barrier that the psychic force 
of the spiritual agent cannot penetrate. It is for this reason 
that physical manifestations are successful just in proportion 
as there is a strong faith-sentiment in the spectators, whose 
external dielectrics are then co-operating with the spiritual 
agent. It constantly happens, however, that some may be 
present whose external dielectrics oppose an insurmountable 
obstacle from other causes, too varied to enter upon here, 
which prevent visible results from being obtained. 

It is by this abnormal vibration of psychic atoms that most 
of the phenomena known as “telepathic” or psychic are 
produced—that wills are dominated, suggestions obeyed, 
trances induced, automatic writing and speaking are propelled 
through the medium, materialisation and all the grosser ex¬ 
hibitions of a physical character are displayed, which have 
for the last forty years or more excited the incredulity 
of one class of mind, while they have exercised a powerful 
fascination over another class. There has never been a period 
of the world’s history, nor a country, in which phenomena 
due to this cause have not exhibited themselves in some form 
or other, and they form the basis of savage superstitions, and 
of their barbarous and often cruel rites and customs. They 
depend entirely for their character and value on the force 
of the pneumatic battery, and the quality of the dielectric 
of the medium—whether he be a Cingalese devil-dancer or 
an American “sensitive.” 

Another class of phenomena depends chiefly upon the af- 


PSYCHIC INFLUENCE. 


165 


finity which exists between the atomic elements of two human 
beings and their dielectric conditions. Thus there are those 
whose atomic elements have a powerful capacity for psychic 
vibration, or, in other words, of domination; while others 
again are exceptionally receptive of psychic influence. These 
two classes, in cases of hypnotic experiments, healing by 
faith, and kindred phenomena, become operator and patient 
respectively. The operator is always—often unconsciously 
to himself—in close psychic rapport with the influence in 
the unseen, which is sometimes a beneficent and sometimes 
a maleficent one, who projects, by pneumatic impulsion, his 
•or her atomic psychic force into the operator, where, becoming 
rbinforced by the magnetic elements of the latter, it passes 
on into the patient with whom atomic affinity has been 
established; and the results are rapid, powerful, and direct, 
just in the degree in which, by constant exercise, the mag¬ 
netic influence has been rendered dominant. As the rela¬ 
tions of the operator with the invisible influence are subject 
to constant variations, arising from the fact that their atomic 
affinity is liable to change—and the same holds good as 
between operator and patient—and as there is an infinite 
variety of operators and patients, it is no wonder that the 
results are capricious and irregular, and that all attempts to 
•classify or reduce them to sharply defined categories must end 
in failure, and in such disputations as have already occurred 
between the hypnotic schools of Paris and Nancy, who are only 
agreed to deny the operation of any invisible agency whatever. 

This is merely a rough sketch of the processes by which 
seen and unseen beings act upon each other, and does not 
profess to classify, after the manner of oriental philosophy, 
the series of vital principles of which the invisible human 
•organism is composed—a subject so complex, that it would 
only tend to confuse the reader. It would also be impossible 
to put into language, the process which distinguishes the 
orderly method of acting through spirit agency upon the 
pneuma of the natural man in its centres, from the disorderly 
method of reaching it through the circumferences. Suffice it 
to say, that all divine action proceeds from centres outwards 
to circumferences, and all infernal action from circumferences 
inwards upon centres. 


166 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


Until this whole class of considerations is recognised as 
existing, and worthy of investigation, science will continue to 
flounder in a very dangerous quagmire indeed ; and although 
much good may be done by conscientious practitioners, the 
dangers, as I pointed out in a previous chapter, are of a fatal 
character. 

From which it will appear that the lowest order of contact 
with the invisible world—so far as the attainment of divine 
truth is concerned—is that which usually, though not nec¬ 
essarily in every instance, accompanies spiritualistic pheno¬ 
mena—which is only psychico-pneumatic impulsion; that 
the phenomena of hypnotism, and those ordinarily termed 
psychic, are due to this method; that a higher order exists,, 
to which we owe what is called divine inspiration, and im- 
pressional communications of the more elevated kind, which 
is due to pneumatic-atomic combinations and psychic inter¬ 
locking; but that a higher still has now become possible, 
by means of pneumatic as well as psychic interlocking, when 
the atoms of the pneumas vibrate in exact accord, the nature 
of which will be more precisely defined presently, as well as 
the difference which exists between that and what I have 
called vibratory combination. 

It must be observed here, that there is a projection of ideas 
into the mind open to this highest order of inspiration, accom¬ 
panied by an internal visualisation, altogether different from 
clairvoyance, in that the latter is objective to the internal 
senses, while the former is subjective to them. The difference 
is not to be described in language, because so few have under¬ 
gone any experiences whichwould render it intelligible to them; 
but this should be understood in estimating the value of any 
inspiration, that inaccuracy with regard to the external facts 
of history, science, and so forth, does not affect its possible 
accuracy with regard to the deeper matters affecting the pro¬ 
gress and destiny of the human soul. The reason of this is, 
that it is not possible, even for an angel, to put into the mind 
of a human being knowledge for the reception of which no 
mental expanses exist in his brain—except automatically. 
Then the inspiration loses all its value, because the human 
instrument has no means of judging of its origin by his own 
internal consciousness. The more he can retain the full con- 


IMPERFECTIONS OF INSPIRATION. 


167 


trol of all his faculties, the more the inspiration seems to come 
spontaneously from himself, the keener does his internal per¬ 
ception become as to its true source. Then it seems to flood 
the centre of his consciousness, and to allow the circumference 
to take care of itself. But as external facts are on the cir¬ 
cumference, the accuracy with which these are presented by 
him must always depend upon his own faculties, his train¬ 
ing and education, and the amount of everyday information 
which has previously been stored in his mind, and which he 
can use to illustrate the ideas pictured in his deep internal 
consciousness. 

The inspiring genius cannot, therefore, be held responsible 
for historical or scientific errors any more than for grammat¬ 
ical ones. The external presentation of the inspiration must 
ever depend upon the man’s own surface education and sur¬ 
roundings. Hence the numerous astronomic and other errors 
contained in the Bible, which, however, do not affect the 
transcendent value of its inspiration, in some places where 
these errors are most apparent. 

This is the reason why, as inspiration becomes fuller and 
deeper, and therefore more divine, it will lose its phenomenal 
character. It is a great mistake to suppose that occurrences 
termed “ miraculous ” or “ supernatural ” are any evidence 
of a divine origin. It is true that most religions are based 
on such occurrences; but that was because the human mind 
at that time was more open to a due discrimination of their 
nature and value—because the rational faculty had not 
swollen to the undue proportion it has now, at the expense 
of the emotional. 

It was, in fact, in an unduly suppressed condition, and few 
divine truths were appreciated intellectually; but in these 
days we must have a reason for the faith that is in us be¬ 
yond phenomena, which are quite as likely to be infernal 
as divine. 

There is no more unwholesome craving than that after 
phenomena, none more weakening to the reason, more unbal¬ 
ancing to the judgment, or more fruitful in misleading those 
who indulge it, from the truth of which they are in quest; 
and there is no statement in this book which will be more 
vehemently denied by spirits through the mediums under 


168 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


their control, than the above explanation of their methods 
of action. For if spiritualists acted upon it, their occupation 
and their amusement would be gone; it will be confirmed by 
some, however. 

Above all are those in danger who seek to open them¬ 
selves to the operation of this psychic force from motives of 
curiosity, gain, or the mere desire to exhibit phenomena which 
may gratify their vanity. They are playing with fire, and 
I would earnestly warn all those before whose eyes these 
lines may fall, on no account to take part in any of those 
after-dinner experiments in which telepathy, thought-reading, 
and hypnotism are trifled with as a more lively amusement 
than a round game. They may be unconsciously opening 
themselves to influences, and establishing connections with 
agencies in the unseen, from which they may find it almost 
impossible to free themselves, and which may possess a power 
of torturing them, both here and hereafter, in ways very 
little dreamt of; nor will they ever be able to trace the 
source of their misery to the fatal evening when, uncon¬ 
sciously, they let the poison into their systems. All super¬ 
ficial dabbling in the occult, or in spiritualism, or in hypno¬ 
tism, should be carefully avoided. God is not approached by 
these methods—they lead, as a rule, in quite the opposite 
direction. Many sad cases of illness from these causes, which 
have terminated fatally, have come under my notice. 

On the other hand, it is of the highest importance that all 
should remember that they are in intimate connection with 
the unseen part of the universe, from which they draw their 
life, and from which it is impossible that they can disentangle 
themselves; and that in the degree in which they rise morally 
here, will they unconsciously to themselves become associated 
with high moral intelligences there, and create, as it were, 
for themselves the home and the society which they will find 
waiting to receive them. 

Let those who have sown in tears here know that, if they 
have learned the lesson their grief was intended to teach 
them, the harvest will be found on the other side. There 
is not an atom of suffering—and suffering, like everything 
else, is composed of atoms—which they have endured here 
which has been wasted, for it is a peculiarity of the atoms of 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF SUFFERING. 


169 


the emotions that they become transmuted by the amount of 
divine vitality which can be projected into them during their 
-earthly passage. The suffering, and the pain, and the misery 
of the world, are its dross, but they are all capable of being 
transformed in the crucible of life into pure gold. Every 
pain-atom, whether it be moral or physical pain, becomes a 
joy-atom when it has done its work of purification here, and 
passes upwards, like incense, to that bright atmosphere, where 
it condenses into a joy-atom, and forms a piece of substantial 
happiness, waiting to be entered into by the one who felt the 
agony of it on earth, and who, instead of rebelling then, 
cherished it as a priceless gift from God. This is the true 
Xarma. 

And let those who have lost loved ones here know that 
they are not lost, but only gone before, if, while on earth, all 
were struggling to fulfil the divine behest, and that it is pos¬ 
sible to be more deeply and interiorly united with them after 
their departure, than could ever have been possible through 
the medium of their fleshly atoms; and let them realise 
further, that death is indeed a new birth, and necessary to 
the soul’s progress. If this were properly understood, part¬ 
ings would lose half their sting, and it would no longer be 
incomprehensible why so many bright examples and useful 
lives were nipped in the bud, at the moment when the ex¬ 
ample was most bright, and the life most useful. The influ¬ 
ence which seemed so powerful for good here was removed, 
because it could be more powerful for good there in its opera¬ 
tion upon those who are left behind, and because in many 
cases the finer moral atoms had developed so rapidly, that 
they could no longer be compressed by those which were 
more material, but burst their fleshly bonds because they 
needed expansion, and that freedom to rise which was denied 
them on earth. Their work now consists in lifting those they 
left on earth to higher moral conditions, and this they can 
accomplish just in the degree that the latter deny themselves 
the luxury of selfish grief, and throw themselves with re¬ 
doubled energy into their daily duties—recognising in the 
apparent loss they have sustained, a new evidence of their 
Father’s love—and invoke by constant and cheerful recollec¬ 
tion of the loved one, who is no longer outwardly visible to 


170 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


them, the potency of the inward presence to guide, aid, and 
sustain them in the service of the neighbour. It is not by 
visiting the carved tablet that marks the resting-place of a 
few bones, or decorating it with immortelles , that this pres¬ 
ence can be enjoyed; but in co-operating with it in the daily 
activities of life, in the consciousness of its inspiring affection 
for others, of its faculty of illuminating the understandings 
nerving the will, and stimulating the energy,—in the con- 
scious sensation of thrills of vital force pulsating through 
the organism, in the delight of the well-known moral and 
mental touch spurring to new endeavour, lifting to new con¬ 
tact with beings ineffable, and so lightening the burden of 
the remaining days of the earthly pilgrimage, by an earnest 
of bliss to come, and the promise of a meeting under condi¬ 
tions which shall more than compensate for all pains endured* 
and all worldly hopes extinguished. 

At present, through the universal ignorance which prevails 
of the relations which the seen bears to the unseen, these 
experiences are vouchsafed to few, but .they are within the 
grasp of ^11; nevertheless they will not be accorded to those 
who shape their lives on earth with a view to attaining them* 
for in that case the selfishness of the motive would vitiate 
the endeavour. The effort for union with God, through ser¬ 
vice for the neighbour, must be solely based upon the idea 
that the neighbour cannot be saved except by virtue of this 
union—because it is this union alone which can render man 
a fitting instrument in divine hands to aid his fellows; and 
as no human being should be dearer to one than God and 
humanity at large, therefore to try and serve God and hu¬ 
manity, in order to retain an internal union with any one 
human being, is to degrade the celestial principle of love of 
God and the neighbour, by making it the means to a selfish 
end. 

What we call death, however, is not generally caused by- 
the development or growth of spiritual life, but is more often, 
due to various other causes, of which the principal is the 
decay of spiritual life, owing to the invasion of infernal energy* 
which poisons the celestial vitality, until the outer frame 
sinks under the mephitic influences thus brought to bear. 
This is the case where the man gives way to the uncontrolled 


CAUSES OF DEATH. 


171 


indulgence of his evil passions, and allows himself to become 
the habitation of unclean spirits, who feed on the atomic 
elements of the vices in which they indulged during earth- 
life. Another cause of death is the draining of the elements 
of the vital atoms by human vampire organisms; for many 
persons are so constituted that they have, unconsciously to- 
themselves, an extraordinary faculty of sucking the life- 
principle from others, who are constitutionally incapable of 
retaining their vitality. 

Thus, it is well known that old people can derive physical 
life from fresh young organisms by sleeping beside them, and 
the experience is common among invalids, whose organisms 
have been rendered sensitive by illness, that the presence of 
certain people is exhaustive, and of others life-giving. It is 
rare for married people to exchange the elements of vital 
atoms in equal proportions, one of the partners nearly always 
gives more than the other receives; nevertheless, this constant 
change of vitality is a necessary condition of our existence as 
we are at present constituted; but as the laws by which it 
is governed are absolutely unknown to the medical profession,, 
which does not treat patients except on their surfaces, an 
appalling amount of wholesale mutual slaughter now goes on 
unchecked. This might be very much diminished if doctors 
would open themselves to divine illumination, and not rele¬ 
gate to the Church that part of the human organism, which,, 
if they knew a little more about it, they would perceive 
conies directly within the sphere of their operations. 

All these three causes of death exhibit themselves exter¬ 
nally in various forms of malady known to the profession, 
and which are treated by them irrespective of their origin, 
which is further complicated by heredity. Hereditary taint, 
is in itself another cause of death, and diseases which spring: 
from it are so intimately connected with the human source- 
from which they were derived—whether the patient be alive 
or dead—that any treatment to be thoroughly successful,, 
involves considerations connected with the invisible world 
which would entail ruin of the professional reputation of any 
medical man who should dare to entertain, much less act. 
upon, them. 

When death ensues from old age, it is because the psychic: 


172 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


atoms have burst the physical atoms which contain them— 
in other words, the physical frame dissolves from excess of 
internal vitality, which it is not capable any longer of assimi¬ 
lating, and therefore slowly decays. Death is also the result 
of violence and other causes not necessary to specify here; 
but in all cases, our relation with those who have passed away 
is retained in one form or other, and we are able to influence 
their lives where they are, as they are able to influence our 
lives here. It is of the utmost importance that this should 
be thoroughly understood and appreciated, as it is calculated 
powerfully to affect our conduct in this life. Few realise 
how much they can often help those who have preceded them, 
and how much they can be helped by them. When, however, 
it is clearly apprehended that visible matter is purely relative 
to our senses, and that the matter which is invisible to us 
bears the same relation to the senses of invisible beings 
that surface-matter does to our senses, we shall have less 
■ difficulty in imagining a condition of things in some respects 
analogous to the nature with which we are familiar. It dif¬ 
fers in this, however, that its aspect to its inhabitants is con- 
• ditioned upon their moral vision: thus, the same scenery in 
the invisible world will present a totally different appearance 
to two persons in opposite moral states—the one esteeming 
divinely beautiful what seems to the other infernal and 
altogether unlovely. In the same way, their modes of life 
and personal appearance present the most violent contrasts, 
while their external bodies are totally dissimilar from each 
•other—those of the lowest order appearing to those of the 
highest as gross, and often, indeed, far grosser than our own ; 
and increasing in repulsiveness in the degree in which they 
sink into depths of moral depravity, and their atomic vices 
take expression in their outward forms. We can form some 
idea of this from the face of a man in the flesh, in whom the 
furrows ploughed by vice and dissipation are strongly marked, 
-and betray the character within. 

It is to this low and debased creature in the invisible, that 
we owe the phenomenon of insanity. When, through hered¬ 
ity, accident by violence, sudden shock, nervous overstrain, 
•or any other cause, a cerebral disorder takes place, depriving 
•the victim of that control which, in the normal condition of 


HUMAN INSANITY. 


m. 

his faculties, he retains over his brain-power, he instantly 
becomes a field for invasion of influences in whom the in¬ 
dulgence of especial vices, pushed to their extreme, become 
insanities. For in the eyes of beings in the upper invisible 
world, the lower presents the appearance of a vast lunatic 
asylum; its inhabitants literally take possession of human 
beings thus afflicted, and melancholia, religious frenzy, in¬ 
ordinate vanity, and all sorts of infernal delusions are thus 
represented before our eyes. As, however, the derangement 
is caused by a disturbance in the most exterior cerebral 
structure, new atomic combinations take place during the 
process of transition into the invisible world, and the suf¬ 
ferer is placed in conditions where his cure can be speedily 
effected. When, therefore, we read in the Gospels of the 
cures by Christ of men possessed by devils, the expression is 
literally accurate: they would have been styled by us luna¬ 
tics; but, in some respects, knowledge in those days was more 
accurate than it is now. 

We read every day, in our law courts, of the abortive at¬ 
tempts of medical men of the present day to define insanity; 
it is, in fact, undefinable—for no such thing as a perfectly 
sane human being exists, or he would be sinless, and the 
patients are often more sane than their doctors. It being 
perfectly impossible, so long as our earth is atomically inter¬ 
locked with its own lower region, to impede infernal cerebral 
invasion, it is all a question of degree, and it is not possible 
to draw a hard and fast line between sanity and insanity. 
All we can do is to put under treatment those who develop 
tendencies dangerous to life or property; and this might be 
done far more effectually, and with far happier results, if 
medical men would look beyond the actual brain-cells for the 
cause of the malady, for they are, in fact, only its habitation. 

The same remark applies to all diseases—even the most 
trivial; a cold in the head, is a form of infestation. In other 
words, sitting in a draught has produced a slight organic dis¬ 
turbance, which opens the healthy life to invasion by a certain 
poisonous quality of atomic force, which finds its way from 
the lower invisible region, where all disease is generated. 
The fact that it can be cured by external remedies, in no 
way disproves the fact that the life which comes from above- 


174 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


is healthy, while that from below is unhealthy, and that un¬ 
healthy life always streams into us when organic conditions 
admit of its doing so; but that the current of it is checked 
as soon as the physical balance is restored by remedial agents. 

These remedial agents would not be confined to pills and 
drugs, if the laws which govern the interchange of atomic 
elements were understood, and, indeed, the efficacy of mag¬ 
netic and hypnotic treatment in certain cases has long been 
recognised; but, as I have said elsewhere, it is attended 
with dangers of another kind, in which evil influences can 
work more harm than the most conscientious practitioner— 
as the world is at present constituted—can do good. Divine 
science, acquired by moral effort, can alone deal satisfactorily 
with physical disease, and there are men in the profession 
upon whom this conviction is beginning to force itself with 
irresistible authority; in illustration of which, I may mention 
a work by Dr Garth Wilkinson, called ‘ The Human Body/ 
in which many of these truths are insisted upon. 

At the same time, it should be understood that disease is 
by no means an unmixed evil; that it is generated by the 
lower, and not the upper life, is unquestionable: but divine 
laws perform their functions through the lower as well as 
through the upper agencies, and the operation of the former 
is therefore made subservient to beneficent ends. Thus 
disease, which is, in fact, an effort of nature to throw off 
poisonous invasive elements, often leaves the organ attacked 
in a far healthier condition than it was before—in which, 
possibly, planes existed for moral infestation. A radical 
change in the organ, produced by disease, often closes the 
avenue to the invasion. Again, it sometimes happens that 
when the organism is extremely reduced physically by dis¬ 
ease, atomic combinations can be effected in the moral nature, 
which would be impossible in conditions of robust physical 
health; and one of the commonest experiences of those who 
make the violent change in their external mode of thought, 
aims in life, and daily habits, which is involved in the at¬ 
tempt to rise above the conventional moral standard, and be 
absolutely and unreservedly self-surrendered to the service 
of God and the neighbour, is a serious attack of illness, from 
which they rise with new and higher faculties developed— 


INFESTATION. 


175 


tlie effect of the illness having been to attenuate the gross 
atomic covering of the finer atomic elements, and so to allow 
these latter to expand. Sometimes it is the very effort of 
these to expand which is the cause of the disease. Thus the 
final effect of disease upon those who are struggling to enter 
into new and higher conditions is always, in a greater or less 
degree, to develop the subsurface faculties. 

It is for the more gross and infesting class of invisible 
beings when they are in their earlier stages, that the earth- 
man can labour, and it is in this phase of their existence that 
the idea of reincarnation has had its origin; for, as I have 
already said, the instinct of the depraved, who are recently 
deceased, is to find for themselves human habitations, and it 
thus becomes possible, for those on earth who understand 
these things, to labour for those of their fellows who are thus 
infested and obsessed. Where their labours are successful, 
and the man is turned from the error of his ways and reformed, 
the possessing spirit, who cannot realise in his phantasy that 
he is not himself the earth-man, becomes captured by the 
power of the divine energy operating through the human 
instrument, and is liberated from the thraldom of his vices 
at the same time as his victim. 

Those, on the other hand, who rise, are perpetually in¬ 
creasing in beauty of expression, as their virtues shine from 
their countenances, and their organisms become refined and 
purified of all earthly taint by incessant labour for others. 
These others are not only those whom they left behind on 
earth, but those in the invisible world who have not yet sunk 
into irreclaimable depths of vicious self-gratification, and 
who are painfully and laboriously lifted, by angelic effort, out 
of regions in which they find alike their misery and their 
insane delight. There is a point, however, where their insani¬ 
ties become so confirmed, that these efforts are of no avail; 
where memory fails, and all continuity of individuality is lost. 
But the divine spark still burns in them—as it does in every¬ 
thing—and their atoms will finally undergo a transformation 
corresponding to death, by which that spark will be liberated, 
and the atoms will recombine around it under new and altered 
conditions This is the final consummation of that suffering 
stage of the planet’s life through which we are now passing; 


176 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


the preparation for it formed, as I propose to show later, the* 
one object of Christ’s mission to earth, and it will be succeeded 
by the condition known among theologians as millennial—but 
the term is misleading, for it has no reference # to time, accord¬ 
ing to our measurement, nor can it be entered upon until that 
unseen region which forms part of our universe has been 
purified by the dissolution and reconstruction of the atomic 
vice-particles, which are the prison-houses at present of the- 
divine elements awaiting their liberation. 

At the opposite extreme to the depths of this pit is the 
ascending scale, which is endless, and where those connected 
with the earliest stage of our planet, and its subsequent 
highest religious life, form tire connecting links between it 
and that still higher region which we call heaven. 

Midway between the upper and lower regions of our uni¬ 
verse is a spiritual tract, which forms a sort of neutral ground,, 
and Is more closely attached to our earth than the other two* 
for it is composed of atomic elements far more nearly allied 
to our own. It is into this that those who pass from earth 
immediately enter, — the most highly developed morally,, 
merely to pass through it into the upper region; the most 
debased to sink with almost equal rapidity into the one below; 
but the vast majority to linger for a shorter or a longer 
period, according to their moral conditions, hovering as it 
were between good and evil, sometimes rising under the 
attraction of the upper region, and the powerful influences 
for good which are brought to bear, sometimes sinking under 
the counter-influence, only to react upwards again. In some 
instances the organisms of the beings in this region are so- 
coarse, as to be visible to hypersensitive persons on earth, 
and their occasional appearances have given rise to the belief 
in ghosts, and the numerous stories of haunted houses and. 
so forth—the atomic influence of earthly localities often pos¬ 
sessing such a powerful magnetic attraction, that it is impos¬ 
sible for these unfortunate creatures to liberate themselves 
from it. It is to this region that the beings from the lower one 
rise, when, under the operation of angelic love, they are drawn 
upwards. It is not possible for those who have passed through 
it into higher conditions to sink back into it again, for the 
attraction of goodness, in the midst of which they dwell, is- 


CHILDREN IN THE UNSEEN. 


177 


too powerful to admit of their doing so; but it is possible for 
those who have sunk through it downwards to be drawn up 
to it again, and so finally saved. This is the origin of the 
doctrine of purgatory. 

It is into this region, then, that everybody passes on leaving 
this world, from still-born children upwards. Infants, on 
entering it, are tenderly cared for, but not relieved from the 
responsibility of free-will, when, as they grow up, they be¬ 
come exposed to the attacks of the lower class of influences. 
They develop there, as they would have done here, the taint 
of the world into which they were born: their hereditary and 
inherent tendencies, whether for good or evil, manifest them¬ 
selves with their earliest consciousness, and they rise or sink 
in the degree in which they yield themselves to the angelic 
attraction which draws them upwards, or to the infernal 
attraction which drags them in the opposite direction. At 
the same time they are far more favourably situated than 
they are here, in regard to surroundings; and are so pro¬ 
tected, that a child’s nature must be very bad indeed to break 
away from its spirit guardians. We have no reason to regret, 
therefore, that the proportion of infants born in the slums 
of great cities, whose only experience of life would be that 
of squalor and crime, who pass into the other world with¬ 
out knowing anything of this one, should be so much larger 
than those of the classes more comfortably situated. It is 
one of the most blessed occupations of good persons who 
have left this world, to rear and watch over children who 
come to them from earth. At the same time, those who 
are atomicalfy connected with them by blood-ties, whether 
in this world or the other, continue to exercise a most powerful 
magnetic influence over them, helping them or retarding their 
progress, according to the quality of their loves and lives. 

Parents who have lost children should always remember 
that the progress of their offspring in the unseen, is much 
influenced by their own lives here, and that in proportion 
as they rise here, does the upward attraction increase upon 
the child there; while many of their own impulses to high 
and noble action here, may be projected upon them, quite 
unconsciously to themselves, from children whom they say 
they have “ lost,” but with whom they are far more nearly 

M 


178 


SCIENTIFIC JRELIGrION. 


connected than if they had lived—who act as their guardian 
angels, and to whose ministrations they may possibly owe 
their salvation. 

On the other hand, parents may exercise a most power¬ 
ful and fatal influence over the future of an infant, by the 
terrible crimes of infanticide or abortion; for the atomic tie 
between mother and child is then so very close, that a virulent 
poison is projected into the infant organism, which infects its 
psychic atomic structure, and carries its infernal taint with it 
into the other life—thus, as it were, surrounding it with a 
barrier to retard its upward progress. This barrier, if the 
will of the child co-operates with that of its guardians, 
can be broken down, but it must ever be a great danger and 
hindrance. 

These are very solemn and affecting considerations, and 
the tie which binds parents to children and infants who 
have gone before, and the influence they mutually exercise 
over each other’s destiny, should never be forgotten. 

From this it will be seen that • nothing can be more 
misleading than the popular conceptions of heaven and hell, 
which have been constructed out of a grossly superficial and 
perverted interpretation of Biblical expressions, and made to 
signify places of reward and punishment, instead of conditions 
which human beings create for themselves out of their 
virtues or their vices. Those who do not work out their own 
happiness by constant endeavour for the happiness of others, 
but fall under the delusion—which invaded the world in a 
manner to which I shall refer later—that it could be worked 
out for its own sake, and at the sacrifice of the happiness 
of others, continue in this delusion until the vices which it 
propagates, produce atomic forces which, after causing excru¬ 
ciating suffering, not unmixed with insane delights, finally 
neutralise each other; but as the divine life-principle in 
them still exists, ft reconstitutes them under entirely new and 
pure conditions, the only loss being that of conscious con¬ 
tinuity of existence on the part of the individual, whose moral, 
intellectual, and physical nature they composed. 

Among the people who can really be said to die, because 
they finally lose continuity of individual consciousness, are 
those also who live in the personal desire for immortality, 


THE DESCENT OF THE SPIRIT. 


179 


and in the delusion that their own happiness here and here¬ 
after is the one end and aim of existence. But those who 
are ready and willing to die that they may save others—who 
have no thought of their own safety or happiness here or 
hereafter, provided only they can win happiness for their 
fellows—they are immortal on this earth; and though they 
may shuffle off what is called their “ mortal coil,” will never 
really die, or lose their own individuality, but progress eter¬ 
nally in the joys of service. 

This is what Christ meant when He said, “ For whosoever 
will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life 
for my sake, the same shall save it; ” and this is the death 
to which He alluded in the declaration, “ Verily I say unto 
you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death; ” 
and again, “ There be some standing here which shall not 
taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in His 
kingdom.” The Son of man came to them in His kingdom 
when, after His death, He connected Himself atomically with 
them, through the pneumatic tie which He had established 
with them while on earth, and which was magnetically created 
by the laying on of hands, and transmitted by the disciples in 
the same manner to those who accepted His teaching. The 
method, however, soon lost its efficacy through the unfaith¬ 
fulness of those who practised it, and was superseded by a 
process more effectual and interior. 

It was to this internal contact with Christ that the won¬ 
derful success of the early teachers of Christianity was due, 
-and it formed the medium of that manifestation which is 
described in the second chapter of Acts “as the sound of 
a rushing mighty wind,” and as the appearance of “ cloven 
tongues like as of fire ” which “ sat upon each of them,” the 
whole occurrence being theologically termed the descent of 
the “ Holy Ghost.” 

The revolution which was produced by the stupendous 
moral energy that this psychico-pneumatic force contained, 
has remained potent in Christendom to the present day. It 
remains in all the Churches, in spite of the fact that “ they 
draw near unto Christ with their mouth, and honour Him 
with their lips, while their heart is far from Him,” and that 
“in vain do they worship Him, teaching for doctrines the 


180 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


commandments of men; ” for its presence is not banished 
from the hearts of men because the ecclesiasticisms to which 
they belong have proved unfaithful; and it remains with 
those who are outside the Churches, because no human organ¬ 
isation can limit its sphere of operations. It is by virtue 
of its silent influence, notwithstanding the vices, and the 
quarrels, and the perversions of Christendom, that a great 
moral quickening is taking place within it; and it is in 
consequence of the forces which it has been gathering in the 
unseen world during nineteen centuries, that a new develop¬ 
ment of its energy is now impending. 

The reason why this could not take place before, is be¬ 
cause the atomic chain by which alone it could be con¬ 
ducted from the source of spiritual potency, is only now 
being completed. It consists of “ the spirits of just men 
made perfect; ” and before the great mass of humanity could 
feel the electric shock which it is destined shortly to impart 
to the visible universe, the batteries had to be prepared, 
and the conducting wires led to the hearts of men; and 
these had respectively to be charged with, and composed 
of, atoms containing the potential elements of good men 
who had fought the good fight in their lives here, and had 
often sunk in the conflict, having apparently accomplished 
nothing. Such martyrs as Savonarola, Madame Guyon, 
and, in our own day, General Gordon, supply illustrations; 
but their names are legion, for the greater part died obscure 
and unknown, and were accounted nothing in their humble 
and limited spheres of faithful service. The crown of glory 
which they have won, is the part they are now playing in the 
great work of universal redemption, and this great work was 
begun when He whom Christendom rightly calls its Saviour, 
brought the restorative vital current into the world, and, 
by the dissolution of His outward frame, distributed its atoms 
once for all throughout the decaying structure of the earthly 
universe, by methods I shall presently describe. Thus the 
accomplishment of that work, which seemed a failure at the 
time, is at hand; and thus the bread of His body, which He 
cast upon the waters, will after many days be found. 

Nothing hinders the consummation of His great work more 
than that misconception of its scope and nature, which 


THE LORD'S PRAYER. 


181 


forms the oasis of the doctrines of the Churches, and which is 
indeed the “ commandments of men.” If we would co-operate 
with Christ, it is not by worshipping the fictitious relics of a 
cross on which He fulfilled His mission nineteen hundred 
years ago, or by metaphorically clinging to it now. The 
solemn words in which He announced His success, though 
their import was not understood at the time, are pregnant 
with meaning to us in these days—“It is finished” 

Our concern is not what He accomplished then, except 
as a matter of most sacred history, but what He demands 
of us now. He did not die to rescue us from the pangs of 
selfish craven terror, nor to minister to the greed and ambi¬ 
tion of egotism. His work was for no one individual, and no 
one individual has the right to appropriate it to himself, 
and turn it to his own private and personal advantage. It 
was for all humanity, and we can only share in it, as we 
lose ourselves in the great humanitarian need; and the great 
humanitarian need is not a harp and a crown, but social 
reconstruction — the extinction of crime, poverty, sorrow, 
and physical disease, and the substitution for them of sin¬ 
lessness, health, and happiness. 

All such prayers as are daily offered in the Churches, are 
a direct hindrance to the highest kind of spiritual union with 
Christ, for they are all tainted by the selfish spirit, and more 
or less ignore the great co-operative work in which we should 
be engaged with Him. There is one prayer which Christ 
adapted in its external sense to the spiritual apprehension of 
those to whom it was given, which contains a sublime hidden 
meaning, a garbled version of which is daily degraded by 
constant and unmeaning reiteration, as if it was a kabbalistic 
formula, while its sense has been perverted by the Church to 
suit a still lower class of intelligence than that to which it 
was originally addressed. There is nothing to justify the 
translation of liriovcnav into daily bread. It means, as 
Canon Carter tells us, “ super-substantial,” and was so taken 
by all early Christian mystics.- The Boman Church, by sub¬ 
stituting “ quotidianum ” here, (and “ carnis ” for o-cofiaro^ in 
the Creed) brought down the doctrine to the understanding 
of the vulgar, and lost the inner meaning to a large extent. 
There are other “orthodox” meanings given to this word— 


182 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


(1) ‘ sufficient for sustenance, and necessary to real existence 
and (2) “ semper paratus,” ‘ coexistent before all worlds, be¬ 
stowed in time, but brought into being independently of time 
and space,’ but the Church prefers “ daily bread ” ! It is no¬ 
wonder that the fearful mockery of beseeching God that 
His will should be done upon earth as it is done in heaven,, 
half-a-dozen times every Sunday, by ignorant, worldly, and 
indifferent congregations, who make no effort to do that will,, 
never seems to strike their spiritual pastors and masters. It 
would be far better never to utter this prayer than thus to- 
insult its author by its “ vain repetition.” In point of fact and 
of experience, the man who is atomically united to Christ, and 
whose sole object in life is to do God’s will here as it is done- 
in heaven, does not need formally to pray to Him; for every 
act is a prayer, and every thought is an aspiration, and every 
aspiration is an inspiration. His life is hid with Christ in 
God. All he needs to pray for is, to know from hour to hour 
what he is to do next, and this—if he is entirely devoid of 
personal desire and inclination—will always be shown to him. 

The service of humanity, which is the only service He de¬ 
mands of us, is instinct in every human breast, and must 
ever be the source of the highest inspiration; for how sings- 
the poet?— 

“Unto each man his handiwork, unto each his crown, 

The just Fate gives ; 

Whoso takes the world’s life on him and his own lays down, 

He, dying so, lives. 

Whoso bears the whole heaviness of the wronged world’s weight 
And puts it by, 

It is well with him suffering, though he face man’s fate ; 

How should he die ? 

Seeing death has no part in him any more, no power 
Upon his head ; 

He has bought his eternity with a little hour, 

And is not dead. 

For an hour, if ye look for him, he is no more found 
For one hour’s space ; 

Then ye lift up your eyes to him and behold him crowned* 

A deathless face.” 1 


1 Swinburne’s Songs before Sunrise. 


1 



DIVINE CO-OPERATION. 


183 


Let us then rise out of a condition of spiritual mendicity, 
and the fetich instinct of propitiating a ferocious Deity, into 
one of divine co-operation—from being beggars for self, into 
being fellow-labourers with Christ in a great task, where 
there is no distinction of persons; for the moral atoms of 
the stupidest and the humblest may be of more value pneu¬ 
matically than those of the most learned and the most ex¬ 
alted, and may connect him with a far higher group of 
spiritual beings. 

Let no man esteem himself unworthy to be a participa¬ 
tor in this divine work: all he needs is an intense longing 
after God, and a passionate love for his fellow-man. This 
at once constitutes him a burning-glass, on which must 
inevitably focalise the ardent rays of the divine affections; 
for the inspirations of which I have been speaking are not 
special emanations vouchsafed only to persons peculiarly 
organised for their reception, but are radiations which fill the 
spiritual universe; and though they reach human beings 
through the atomic forces I have described, it needs only 
the requisite moral attitude to ensure their concentration 
upon any man who seeks to receive the light and the warmth 
that they impart; and he will feel their blessed and vivifying 
influence grow more potent in the degree in which he can 
shake himself free from the scientific and theological tram¬ 
mels which now impede the development of men’s higher 
faculties, and blind them to the perception of facts, which 
are only concealed from their finer vision by the prejudices 
and the superstitions of the learned and the devout. 


184 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE RELATION OF MAN TOWARDS GOD, CHRIST, AND THE UNSEEN WORLD, 
HERE SET FORTH, CONFIRMED BY THE INNER SENSE OF THE BIBLE 
—ALL SACRED BOOKS HAVE THEIR HIDDEN SENSE—TEACHING OF 
THE KABBALAH AND OF THE FATHERS ON THIS POINT—INNER SENSE 

of Christ’s teaching has been lost, and the symbols and ex¬ 
ternals ALONE REMAIN ; HENCE SUPERSTITION, BIGOTRY, AND HYPO¬ 
CRISY — FREQUENT ALLUSIONS TO THE “ MYSTERY ” IN THE NEW 
TESTAMENT—ST PAUL’S APPREHENSION OF IT—THE MOST ANCIENT 
RELIGIONS CONTAIN IT IN THEIR UNIVERSAL CONCEPTION OF GOD, 
AS AN INFINITE PATERNAL AND MATERNAL PRINCIPLE, PERVADING, 
ANIMATING, AND SUSTAINING ALL THINGS BY THE “ WORD ”—JUDA¬ 
ISM, WHICH WAS AN IMPROVED RENDERING OF THE EGYPTIAN AND 
CHALDEAN RELIGIONS, CONTAINED IT CONCEALED IN THE MOSAIC 
LAW, OF WHICH CHRIST WAS THE FULFILMENT —GENESIS COMPOSED 
AND COMPILED UNDER A MOST POWERFUL INSPIRATION—MYSTICISM I 
ITS USES AND ABUSES. 


The view which has been presented of the relation which 
man generally—but more especially the man who calls 
himself a Christian—occupies towards God, the unseen world, 
the founder of his religion, and his fellow-men, while it is 
essentially unorthodox in so far as the popular theology is 
concerned, is absolutely in harmony with the spirit of the 
traditions upon which the greatest religions of the world 
have been founded, including those of the Bible. For although 
all these sacred records are full of human imaginings, of con¬ 
tradictory utterances, of unintelligible symbolisms, of mythical 
legends, and of vague traditions, they all possess to a greater 
or less degree an inner sense, the meaning of which was gener¬ 
ally concealed from the prophets and seers from whom they 
emanated; and it is the interpretation of this inner sense 
which has formed the devotional exercise of the mystics from 



THE HIDDEN MEANING. 


185 


the earliest times. To this day the Eastern religions retain 
their associations of “ initiated,” who are versed in the hidden 
meaning of their Scriptures. Buddhist and Hindoo, Jew and 
Moslem, Parsee and Druse—not to mention Ansaryii, Meta- 
walies, Ismailians, and numerous minor sects—all recognise 
the existence of an esoteric side to their religions; all ven¬ 
erate those who are supposed to be versed in it, and be¬ 
lieve that the truths which it contains are of a higher order 
than those which appear in the external sense of the words. 
This was also the case with the earlier Christians; and the 
fact that the Bible possesses this inner meaning is indicated 
both in the Old and New Testaments. It is recognised in the 
Talmud, believed in by the Chassidim or orthodox Jews, and 
strongly insisted upon in the Kabbalah. Thus it is written: 
“Woe be to the son of man who says that the Tora (Penta- 

* teuch) contains common sayings and ordinary narratives! 
4 Eor if this were the case, we might in the present day com- 
4 pose a code of doctrines which would excite greater respect. 

* If the law contains ordinary matter, then there are nobler 
4 sentiments in profane codes. Let us go and make a selection 

* from them, and we shall be able to compile a far superior 
4 code. But every word of the law has a sublime sense and a 
4 heavenly mystery. ... Now the spiritual angels had to put 
4 on an earthly garment when they descended to this earth; 
4 and if they had not put on such a garment, they could neither 

* have remained nor been understood on earth ; and just as it 

< was with the angels, so it is with the law. When it descended 
■« on earth, the law had to put on an earthly garment to be un- 
« derstood by us, and the narratives are its garments. There 

< are some who think that this garment is the real law, and 
■* not the spirit with which it is clothed. But these have no 
■* position in the world to come ; and it is for this reason that 
‘ David prayed, f Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold 

< the wondrous things of Thy law ’ (Psalm cxix. 18). What 
« is the garment under the law ? There is a garment which 
« every one can see, and there are foolish people who, when 
« they see a well-dressed man, think of nothing more worthy 

< than this beautiful garment, and take it for the body, while 
4 the worth of the body itself consists of the soul. The law, 
«too, has a body ; this is the commandments, which are called 


186 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


* the body of the law. This body is clothed in garments, which 
‘ are the ordinary narratives. The fools of the world look at 

* nothing else but the garment, which consists of the narratives. 
‘ of the law; they do not see any more, and do not see what. 
‘ is beneath the garment. But those who have more under- 
1 standing, those do not look at the garment, but at the 

* body beneath ( i.e ., the moral); while the wisest, the servants 

* of the heavenly King, those who dwell at Mount Sinai, 
‘ look at nothing else but the soul {i.e., the secret doctrine), 
‘ which is the root of all the real law, and these are destined 
‘ in the world to come to behold the soul of this soul {i.e., the 
‘ Deity) which breathes in the law.” 1 

It was in allusion to this hidden meaning that Christ said, 
“ I come not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it.” In what 
sense He was the fulfilment of the law I propose to show 
later. We learn from the Kabbalah that this knowledge 
was made known to the chosen of God after painful initiations* 
It was called “ the luminous mirror,” in contrast with the 
non-luminous mirror, the vision of ordinary mortals. It 
was called the tree of life, as contrasted with the tree of 
knowledge. “ Come and see where the soul reaches—that 
‘ place which is called the treasury of life. She enjoys a 
‘ bright and luminous mirror which receives its light from 
‘ the highest heaven. The soul could not bear this light 
‘ but for the luminous mantle it puts on. For, just as the 
‘ soul, when sent to this earth, puts on an earthly garment 

* to preserve herself here, so she receives above a shining; 

* garment in order to be able to look without injury into- 
‘ the mirror whose light proceeds from the Lord of light. 

‘ Moses, too, could not approach to look into that higher 
‘ light which he saw without putting on such an ethereal 
‘ garment, as it is written, ‘ And Moses went into the cloud/ 
‘ which is translated by means of the cloud, wherewith he 
‘ wrapped himself as if dressed in a garment. At that time 
‘ Moses discarded almost the whole of his earthly nature, as it 
‘ is written that Moses was on the mountain forty days and 

* forty nights, and he thus approached that dark cloud whereon 

* God is enthroned. In this time the departed spirits of the 
4 righteous dress themselves in the upper regions in luminous 

1 Sohar, 3. 152 a —Dr Ginsburg’s translation. 


DIVINE MYSTERIES. 


187 


* garments, to be able to endure that light which streams from 

* the Lord of light.” 1 

Thus it was that Christ retired to a mountain for forty 
days and forty nights, to receive that law which He gave to 
His disciples, which, in its outward sense, contains simple 
ethical precepts which all can understand, though none obey 
them, while the hidden meaning of it is now waiting to be 
revealed to those who will internally receive Him. It was to 
this inner sense that Clement of Alexandria made allusion, 
when he said that Christ imparted it exclusively to James, 
Peter, John, and Paul. The inclusion of the last named shows 
that in the mind of the writer it must have been, in Paul’s 
case, by internal illumination—a statement borne out by Paul 
himself in his assertion that he was taken up into the third 
heaven, and heard things which it is not lawful for man to 
utter. And here I would parenthetically remark, that while 
a great many of Paul’s utterances are, as he says, of himself, 
and not of the Lord, a great many are pregnant with the 
deepest internal meaning, and these are for the most part 
exactly those which have been wrested by the Churches into 
dogmas dishonouring alike to God, and to Him whom they 
call their Lord. 

Clement says further, in reference to this secret teaching 
of Christ, “that it was not designed for the multitude, but 
‘ communicated only to those who were capable of receiving 

* it orally, not by writing ” 2 —allusion to which is made in the 
Acts, where it is said that after His resurrection, Christ 
“through the Holy Spirit had given commandments unto the 

* apostles whom He had chosen; to whom also He showed 
‘ Himself alive after His passion by many infallible proofs, 

* being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things 
‘ pertaining to God.” And Paul describes the difficulty he 
finds in conveying these higher truths when he writes to the 
Corinthians: “ And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as 

* spiritual, but as carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I 
c have fed you with milk and not with meat; for hitherto ye 
‘ were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able, for ye 
‘ are yet carnal.” 

1 Ginsburg, pp. 37, 38. 

* See Clement of Alexandria, by Dr Kaye, Bishop of Lincoln, p. 241. 


188 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


The reason of this spiritual denseness, he proceeds to say, 
lies in the tendency they had already begun to exhibit, to 
■dogmatise. 

The process of unfolding deep spiritual truth to the spirit¬ 
ually evolving man, is beautifully imaged in the Sohar, where 
the hidden sense is likened to a lovely woman concealed in 
her palace, who, when her friend and beloved passes by, opens 
for a moment a secret window, and is seen by him alone, and 
then withdraws herself for a long time; so the doctrine only 
shows itself to him who is devoted to her with body and soul, 
and then only by degrees. First, she beckons the passer-by 
with her hand; this is the first and most extreme glimpse of 
truth. Then she approaches closer and whispers, but her face 
is still covered by a thick veil; this is the second stage of 
revelation. She then talks to him with a thin veil; this is 
the third stage. Finally, she shows herself face to face, and 
intrusts him with the innermost secrets of her heart. 1 

It will thus be seen that, according to the Kabbalah, there 
•are four degrees of the inner sense of the “Word,” and to 
these it furnishes elaborate keys. That the early Christians 
also recognised an internal interpretation to the sacred record, 
is indicated by the advocacy of Origen of three senses, which 
he calls crco/xaTL/cb '?, tyv^i/cos, irveufiariKos, or earthly, psychic, 
and pneumatic. “ The sentiments of Holy Scripture,” he says, 
“must be imprinted upon each one’s soul in a threefold 

* manner, that the more simple may be built up by the flesh 
‘ (or body) of Scripture, so to speak, by which we mean the 

* obvious explanation; that he who has advanced to a higher, 

* may be edified by the soul of Scripture, as it were; but he 
4 that is perfect, and like to the individual spoken of by the 

* apostle (1 Cor. xi. 6, 7) must be edified by the spiritual law, 
4 having a shadow of good things to come.” 2 

In the same way, Swedenborg recognises three senses, which 
he classifies as natural, spiritual, and celestial—of which his 
books purport to give the spiritual sense, and those of T. L. 
Harris the celestial; but neither Kabbalists, Gnostics, Sweden- 
horgians, or any other Church or sect have yet turned their 
knowledge of the hidden treasures, which they admit the 
Bible contains, to any practical account. And this notwith- 

1 Sohar, 2. 99. 2 irepi apxwv, lib. v. cap. 11. 


SPIRITUAL PERCEPTION. 


189 


standing the fact that they have extracted from it moral truths 
which should revolutionise society, and might help to lay the 
foundation for that new spiritual departure after which the 
whole creation is yearning. 

As a rule, the very fact that any such inner sense exists, is 
ignored by the world at large, and in the Churches of Christ¬ 
endom nothing remains of it but the outward symbolisms of 
the sacraments, the true significance of which has been per¬ 
verted, until they have dwindled down to mere acts of cere¬ 
monial observance, in which a hidden virtue, ensuring ever¬ 
lasting salvation and a present means of grace, are supposed 
to reside; which, however, produce a scarcely appreciable 
effect upon the manner of outward living. For, as Paul says, 
“ The kingdom of heaven is not eating and drinking, but 
righteousness and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” 1 

In point of fact, the internal meaning of the Word is 
neither threefold nor fourfold, but manifold, and to each one 
who seeks earnestly, will be revealed the internal meaning 
adapted to his moral and intellectual condition, his past train¬ 
ing, and his present capacity for reception. 

The reason why those who have sought for light by kab- 
balistic methods, by the interpretation of symbols, the appli¬ 
cation of keys, and so forth, have quarrelled among themselves 
over the meanings of passages, and have failed, with all their 
occult science, to enlighten the world to its own salvation, 
has been partly because they have applied their intellect and 
not their affections to the work, and partly because they were 
themselves open to the perception of truth in different de¬ 
grees ; and one could see in a passage what was hidden from 
another, just as an artist, looking at a Eaphael, might discover 
beauties which would be hidden from an ordinary observer, 
while a peasant might fail to distinguish it from the sign¬ 
board of an inn. It is the same with spiritual sight; it is as 
impossible to prove that the internal meaning discovered in a 
passage of sacred writ is true, to one who can only see its 
outward meaning, as it would be to try and explain tone and 
breadth of treatment in a picture to a peasant. 

The denseness of spiritual perception of the Jews in regard 
to sacred mysteries, both in the times of Isaiah and of Christ, 
1 Romans xiv. 17. 


190 


SCIENTIFIC RELxorlON. 


is alluded to by the latter in His quotation from the prophet 
— 44 By hearing, ye shall hear, and shall not understand ; and 

* seeing ye shall see, and not perceive: for this people’s heart 

* is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their 
4 eyes they have closed ; lest at any time they should see with 
‘ their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand 

* with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal 

* them.” These words apply literally to the present day; 
and * “ the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven,” to which 
Christ was referring, are as hidden from “ the wise and pru¬ 
dent ” now as they were then—for they are all summed up 
in that wondrous Personality, whose nature, achievement, 
and mission have never been apprehended. 

The mysteries which, as Christ said, it was given the 
apostles to know, are but a fraction of those waiting to be re¬ 
vealed—for they were unprepared for more than a compara¬ 
tively superficial apprehension of the great work which their 
Master performed on earth. Therefore He said to them, 
“ There are many things I have to say unto you, but ye can¬ 
not bear them now; ” and therefore it was, that when He 
endeavoured to explain to His disciples the greatest mystery 
of all, which was contained in His death and resurrection, 
they so little understood it, that Peter “ began to rebuke Him, 
4 saying, Be it far from Thee, Lord: this shall not be unto 
4 Thee. But He turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind 
4 me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me ; for thou savourest 
‘ not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” 

The saying of Ezekiel applies with equal force now that it 
did then, to any man who would try to call Christendom 
to repentance: “ Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of a 
4 rebellious house, which have eyes to see, and see not; they 
4 have ears to hear, and hear not: for they are a rebellious 
4 house.” And the prophets of Christendom are like the false 
prophets of Israel in those days, 44 which prophesy concerning 
Jerusalem, and see peace when there is no peace, saith the 
Lord God.” 

The influences which deaden the spiritual perception of 
a Church and of a people are ceremonial, formalism, priest¬ 
craft, dogmatism, and the intolerance which results there¬ 
from. They are accurately described in the first chapter of 


THE SEVENTH DAY. 


191 


Isaiah. “ Bring no more vain oblations/’ says the prophet; 
incense is an abomination to me; the new moons and sab- 

* baths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is 

< iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and 

* your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble 

< unto me; I am weary to bear them.” There is not a Church 
in Christendom which does not worship God with its lips, 
while its heart is far from him; and they all represent, in 
their several degrees, the various hypocrisies denounced by 
the prophet. The “ oblations,” the “ feast-days,” and the “ in¬ 
cense ” distinguish one group; the “ calling of assemblies ” 
and the “ Sabbath ” distinguish another, and more especially 
the Ultra-Evangelicals, Presbyterians, and Dissenters, among 
whom hypocrisy is more highly developed than among other 
Christians: this is principally due to the fact that they 
devote one day in the week more exclusively to the practice 
of this hypocrisy than other sects, and that day they call 
“the Lord’s.” The result is bigotry and self-righteousness, 
which renders them especially deaf and darkened and foolish 
spiritually. 

All Churches are still blind to the elementary fact that 
every day is the Lord’s, and that it would be better to deny 
Him any day, than to put Him off with only one. The 
institution of the Sabbath, or seventh day, which was in 
existence, as we learn from Accadian records, in the populous 
city of Eridu, about the time of the creation of the world, 
according to the Biblical chronology (see Professor Sayce, 

< Hibbert Lectures ’), had a special internal signification. Not 
only did it mark seven periods of the world’s evolution, but 
it typifies seven periods of race-history, also seven periods in 
the history of every human soul. It would occupy too much 
time to enumerate all the passages in the Bible in which the 
number seven has an esoteric sense, but there are at least 
fifty; among the most interesting are those in Revelation, 
which describe the “ Lamb as it had been slain, having seven 
horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God,” 
who alone was found worthy to open the book with the seven 
seals; those referring to the seven angels with the seven 
trumpets, to the seven thunders, to the beast with the seven 
heads and the seven crowns, to the seven angels with the seven 


192 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


last plagues, and to the seven vials. When, therefore, the 
Jews were commanded to keep the seventh day holy, the 
command was derived from a much older theology, and 
there was a special mystical reason for it which they did 
not understand — so, by way of an explanation adapted to 
their comprehension, they were told that upon that day God 
got tired with the exertion of making the world, and rested; 
but the real reason was, that it closed one period of the 
internal history of the race. This period terminated with 
the advent of Christ, who practically abolished the Sabbath, 
when He said, “ The Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath.” 
He did not, however, substitute any other single day for 
it, but all days; His teaching being that the service of God 
and the neighbour was a daily duty, and that the “ Sabbath 
was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” The disciples* 
however, continued to observe the Jewish Sabbath until the 
destruction of Jerusalem, gradually substituting for it after¬ 
wards the first day of the week: since then the whole of 
Christendom has persistently broken the fourth command¬ 
ment ; while the more unintelligent portion of it, without any 
Scriptural warrant, applies rules which had reference especi¬ 
ally and exclusively to the seventh day of the week, to the 
first, and even goes so far as to call it the seventh or Sabbath 
day, instead of by its true Hebrew name. 

Christians of all denominations cannot too speedily recog¬ 
nise that their solemn assemblies, as at present conducted— 
on whatever day they may be held—are an “ iniquity.” Those- 
who have once experienced the quickening thrill of the divine 
afflatus, and the actual physical change in external respira¬ 
tion which accompanies it, will bear me out in the asser¬ 
tion, that to enter a Christian Church, unless to carry out 
some divine mission specially imposed, while what is called 
“ worship ” is going on, often produces a sensation of oppres¬ 
sion and suffocation which sometimes becomes too painful to 
endure. I appeal to the testimony of others, because, thank 
God, the number of those who are physically as well as 
morally conscious of this increasing respiratory sensitiveness, 
is daily augmenting. 

These things being so, I can scarcely venture to hope that 
many will realise the truth of the interpretations which I 


DEGREES OF INSPIRATION. 


193 


am about to give to passages of Scripture, which their out¬ 
ward sense does not convey. I only refer to the Bible at 
all, because it is necessary, in writing upon subjects of thi 3 
nature, to appeal to the authority which the masses still 
respect, if they do not obey it; and because it is so absolutely 
confirmatory of views which had forced themselves upon my 
consciousness, irrespective of the sacred record: but I am 
always confronted with this difficulty, that the prejudice 
among men of science, who only judge of sacred books by 
their external sense, and by their effect upon the lives of so- 
called believers in them, is so strong, that any appeal to them 
tends rather to repel than to attract. Nevertheless sacred 
books, in spite of their imperfections, have had a transcendent 
value for humanity in the history of the ages, and to ignore 
them, would be to ignore the most powerful moral engine 
which has been employed by Providence for the control and 
restraint of human passions. To treat them with contempt 
is alike unphilosophical and narrow-minded—the more especi¬ 
ally as they contain treasures of knowledge and wisdom for 
those who know how to dive for them; but in order to do so 
successfully, they must be taken for what they are really 
worth—neither elevated into infallible guides on the one hand, 
nor despised as old wives’ fables on the other. 

There is an infinite variety in the degree of inspiration 
in all writings claiming to have a supernatural origin, though 
the signification of the word “ supernatural ” depends upon 
the arbitrary definition we choose to attach to the word 
“natural.” There are parts of the Bible which have been 
derived from so low a source, that there is very little that is 
divine in them, and which are calculated to do more harm 
than good; and there are parts pregnant with the deepest 
spiritual meaning, and with truths, still unrevealed, of inesti¬ 
mable value. All unfolding of arcana must be purely arbi¬ 
trary, and can only be judged by the appeal it makes to 
the respective faculties of the reader; and as these vary in¬ 
finitely, what is clear to one is obscure to another, and what 
attracts one, repels the other. 

It may safely be affirmed, that the more full a book is 
of divine truth, the more on its first presentation it will repel 
the majority. This is as true of a book as of a man, and 

N 


194 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


we know what the result of three years of Christ’s teaching 
was to the Teacher. The best proof, therefore, of its value, 
will be the violent hostility and antagonism which it will 
excite. Should what is here written be received with popular 
approval, I should require no better evidence of its falsity, 
and feel that the source from which I had derived my inspi¬ 
ration, was exactly the opposite to that which I believed it 
to have been . 1 

It may often appear, then, that the meanings which I attach 
to certain passages in the Bible, may seem strained and 
fanciful to those who have regard only to its external sense. 
If, for instance, I should say that Hagar, Sara’s maid, whom 
Abraham married on her mistress’s recommendation, meant 
really Mount Sinai, and corresponded to Jerusalem, it would 
seem in the highest degree fantastic, had not St Paul said the 
same thing. Indeed we find him, in the fourth chapter of 
Galatians, calling the whole history of Abraham, his wives and 
children, an “ allegory,” and he assumes, in the first chapter of 
Eomans, that the most profound mystery, that of the creation 
itself, may be understood, “ For the invisible things of Him 
(God) are clearly seen, being understood by the things that 
are made, even His eternal force and Godhead.” It seemed 

1 I have been induced to come to this conclusion by some of the criticisms 
■with which ‘ Masollam ’ was received, of which I give a few specimens :— 

“ It is not necessary, or perhaps desirable, to discuss Mr Oliphant’s theory ; 
it practically means that men may become on earth what it is taught by 
theologians the blessed become in heaven. It may be questioned whether 
such teaching as this can have any healthy effect.” 

“ "We have some suspicion of those who profess too all-embracing aims. We 
think we see the altruistic household in that of Mrs Jellaby.” 

“ On another planet existence so ecstatic might be possible, but on earth it 
is scarcely even desirable.” 

The British Philistine will probably turn away with supreme scorn from a 
book with which his intellectual development allows but little sympathy.” 

“ The hazy altruism which Mr Oliphant would substitute for the faith once 
delivered to the saints.” 

“ Mr Oliphant’s fad of altruism.” 

What was the faith once delivered to the saints but altruism ? and what 
was Christ’s fad but altruism ? Well may Mr W. S. Lilly, in a recent article, 
talk of the “ congenital imbecility of the English mind in respect of eternal 
and divine things.” 


SACRED SYMBOLISMS 


195 


relatively simple to Paul, who was probably an Essene, that 
mysteries which had formed the subject of study from the 
earliest times, should offer no difficulty to those who now 
looked into them by the light of that Gospel which Christ 
had come to teach, and which is described as “ the power ”— 
or “ force ”—“ of God unto salvation,” endowing man with 
a wisdom heretofore denied him, “ yet not the wisdom of this 

* world, nor of the princes (men of science) of this world, that 

* come to nought: but we speak the wisdom of God in a 

* mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained be- 
4 fore the world unto our glory: which none of the princes 

* of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not 

* have crucified the Lord of glory ” 1 —as they do to this day. 
So then, “he that is spiritual discerneth all things, yet he 
himself is discerned of no man.” 

We have a remarkable illustration of the tendency of the 
early Christian Church to search for the hidden meaning in 
the Old Testament narrative, in the General Epistle of Barna¬ 
bas, the 8th chapter and 10th verse, where he says: “ Under- 

* stand therefore, children, these things more fully, that 

* Abraham was the first that brought in circumcision, looking 

* forward to the spirit, to Jesus; circumcised, having received 

* the mystery of three letters. For the Scripture says that 
‘ Abraham circumcised three hundred and eighteen men of 
4 his house. But what, therefore, was the mystery that was 

* made known unto him ? Mark—first the eighteen, and next 

* the three hundred. For the numeral letters of ten and eight 
‘ are I.H., and these denote Jesus. And because the cross was 

* that to which we were to find grace, therefore he adds, three 

* hundred, the note of which is T (the figure of his cross). 

* Wherefore by two letters he signified Jesus, and by the third 
4 His cross. He who has put the engrafted gift of His doctrine 

* within us, knows that I never taught to any one a more cer- 

* tain truth; but I trust that ye are worthy of it.” 

It is clear to those who have made a study of the most 
ancient religions, by the light of their more interior faculties, 
that they are—not the result of the fetich gropings of primi¬ 
tive man, or were derived from dreams, as Mr Herbert 
Spencer and other philosophers would have us believe—but 

1 1 Corinthians ii. 6-8. 


196 


SCIENTIFIC .RELIGION. 


the remains of much higher truths that man once possessed, 
in regard to the nature of God, the creation of the world, 
the changes it has undergone, the introduction of what we 
term evil, and the progress of the human soul; and the 
tradition of this more illumined condition is still preserved 
in the legend of the “ Golden Age.” 

The religious instinct of man has been devolving, not 
evolving, though the tide has turned, and the evolutionary 
period has once more commenced. In all the highest utter¬ 
ances of extinct religions, as well as of those that exist, we 
find the same leading ideas, all pointing to a common origin, 
and all presenting the same fundamental principles, though 
they have been perverted by human imagination into poly¬ 
theisms and superstitions, and surrounded by myths and 
legends, which have in some cases almost obscured the primi¬ 
tive worship. It would need a volume devoted to the subject 
to do justice to it, but modem research is tending strongly 
in this direction; and provided that those who engage in this 
study are animated by the right motives, and are thoroughly 
free from preconceived philosophical or theological prejudices, 
I have no fear of the assertion I have just ventured to make 
being confirmed; and I am the more assured of it by the 
concluding paragraph of Professor Sayce’s very remarkable 
essay on the ‘ Eeligion of the Ancient Babylonians.’ “ This,” 
he says, " is the day of specialists; the increased application 
‘ of the scientific method, and the rapid progress of discovery, 
‘ have made it difficult to do more than note and put together 
‘ the facts that are constantly crowding one upon the other, in 
‘ a special branch of research. The time may come again, 
‘ nay, will come again, when once more the ever-flowing 
‘ stream of discovery will be checked, and famous scholars 
‘ and thinkers will arise to reap the harvest which we have 
‘ sown. Meanwhile I claim only to be one of the humble 
‘ labourers of our own busy age, who have done my best to 
‘ set before you the facts and theories we may glean from the 
‘ broken shreds of Nineveh, so far as they bear upon the reli- 
‘ gion of the ancient Babylonians. It is for others whose 
‘ studies have taken a wider range, to make use of the ma- 
‘ terials I have endeavoured to collect, and to discover in 
* them, if they can, guides and beacons towards a purer 


ANCIENT CLASSIFICATIONS. 


197 


* form of faith than that which can be found in the official 
‘ creeds of our modern world.” 1 

When we find a professor of science prepared to look back 
six thousand years for guides and beacons towards a purer 
form of faith than can be found in official creeds, and a 
Canon of the Church prepared to give up the popular view 
of the atonement and the Trinity, we have evidences of 
the commencement of an evolutionary epoch tending to¬ 
wards a purer and higher morality, which is infinitely en¬ 
couraging. 

Inquirers in this direction have already discovered that 
the most ancient conception of the Deity was that of an 
infinite paternal and infinite maternal principle, united in 
one, pervading all things, and animating all things, by virtue 
of an infinite creative and sustaining principle, which was 
called the “Word.” As an illustration of the point to which 
students have already arrived, I annex a table made out by 
Mr Arthur Lillie, 2 in which, however, he styles the “Word” 
the solar God-man. Although I do not agree in his classi¬ 
fication, the question of nomenclature is purely academic, and 
does not bear upon the point, which is so highly important, 
of the prevalence throughout all of the same idea. 



Father. 

Mother. 

Solar God-Man 
(or Word). 

Rig Veda . . 

Varuna 

Aditi . . 

Mitra. 

Manu 

Brahma, . 

Maya . 

Brahma. 

Buddhism 

Buddha . 

Prajna or Dharma 

Sangha. 

Zoroastrianism . 

Zervan Akarind 

Ardvi Cura 

Ahura Mazda or 

Ormuzd. 

Egypt 

Amin Ra . . 

Neith. . 

Osiris. 

Old Greece 

The Serpent 

Ceres . 

Bacchus. 

Plato 

Father 

Mother or Nurse 

Logos. 

Woden . 

All Father 

Frigga 

Woden. 

Kabbalah . 

Ensoph . 

Sophia . 

Logos. 

Gnostics, per¬ 
haps Essenes 

Abraxas . 

Sophia . 

Gnosis or Chris¬ 
tos. 

China 

Yn . 

Yang . 

Taiki. 

Babylonia. 

Bel . 

Melissa . 

Tammuz. 


1 Hibbert Lectures. 


2 The Popular Life of Buddha, p. 249. 








198 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


There is one change, however, I would wish to make, and 
this is the orthodox Jewish, as well as sometimes the kabba- 
listic symbol of the Divine Feminine, which is Shechinah,’ 
and which, although it signifies tent or covering literally, 
was used to conceal the ark, in which was contained the 
mystery of the Divine Feminine. So the Hebrew for “ The 
Word” is Davad, and in the Targum, Memra. 

Judaism is nothing more nor less than a Jewish rendering 
of the ancient Babylonian, Egyptian, Hindoo, and Zoroastrian 
religions, blended, modified, improved, and inspired to suit the 
exigencies of the time, and the character of the people for 
whom it was adapted. Hence we find much of the Levitical 
law in the Egyptian ritual for the dead, much of the Mosaic 
cosmogony in the tablets of creation, which have lately been 
brought to light through the efforts of the late Mr George 
Smith and Professor Sayce, containing the legends of ancient 
Accad, and much of the mysticism of the Mazdeans, which 
more especially pervades the Talmud and the Kabbalah. 
This in no way affects or reflects upon the value of Bib¬ 
lical cosmogony and theology; it simply proves that God 
did not leave the world, with its teeming population, and 
its advanced civilisation, for thousands of years prior to the 
days of Abraham, without any religion at all, but that such rev¬ 
elations of Him as existed, obscured, perverted, and modified 
as they were by man’s ignorance and inventions, were the re¬ 
mains of a still higher one which had preceded them, and that 
Judaism was the purest outcome as a reform of those religions, 
for which society was prepared at the period of its initiation. 

From these most ancient sources it is easy now to con¬ 
struct the history of the creation of the world in six days, the 
story of the fall of man, the account of the deluge, and of the 
building of the Tower of Babel, which no doubt vary in many 
particulars, owing to the fact that so far as we know they ex¬ 
isted only in oral tradition among the Jews for a long period; 
the first and second books of the Pentateuch being only 
committed to writing, according to the conclusions of those 
who have devoted themselves to research on this subject, 
about B.c. 800, and some of the others contained in the Old 
Testament, such, for instance, as the Book of Esther, being 
-disputed as canonical down to the time of Christ. 


THE INSPIRATION OF GENESIS. 


199 


The books termed Mosaic, though it seems to be generally 
conceded that they were not written by Moses, are to a great 
extent practically his, for it was owing to his great learning 
as a priest of the Temple of the Sun, and as a pupil of Jethro, 
who was one of the most learned mystics of his time, and as 
a descendant of Abraham, who was the chief of a society of 
occultists in Chaldea, that he was enabled, under inspiration, 
to give his people an account of the creation of the world, and 
impose upon them a law, both of which have a very profound 
internal meaning. In fact there are no books in the Old 
Testament more pregnant with occult divine wisdom than 
some portions of the Pentateuch, except perhaps the Book of 
Job; while others, such, for instance, as the books of Chron¬ 
icles, are entirely devoid of any arcana whatever, and are 
merely an historical record compiled by Jewish rabbis and 
scribes, probably not earlier than B.c. 200, and owing to the 
strong anti-Samaritan bias by which they are disfigured, are 
historically misleading. 

It is evident, however, that the compilers of Genesis, 
although they incorporated other traditions into those of 
Moses, were under a most powerful inspiration. The ap¬ 
parent confusion in the record, which has given rise to their 
division into the Jehovistic and Elohistic accounts, possesses 
really a deep internal significance. In the Talmud and 
Kabbalah we have the internal meaning of the Mosaic account 
of the creation, elaborated in a form of mysticism, which 
strikes the reader, judging it only by its surface meaning, 
sometimes as childish, sometimes as fantastic and even re¬ 
volting, and sometimes as profound. The Talmud especially 
is full of inspiration from sources in the highest degree mis¬ 
leading ; much of it is silly trash, lacking any inner meaning 
at all, while at other times it contains passages of high 
significance. The Kabbalah may be said to be the only 
really valuable rtsumt of ancient mysticism; but while it 
contains much of the wisdom of the ages, conveyed in a 
form which is unintelligible except to the initiated, it must 
always depend largely upon the initiated themselves what 
hidden meaning they discover in it; and in view of the far 
more sure and simple method of arriving at divine truth 
which dow exists, its study can scarcely be said to be at- 


200 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


tended with profit, excepting for reference, and under very 
special circumstances. Modern criticism has been much ex¬ 
ercised as to the date and authorship of the Kabbalah, as if 
the value of its contents could possibly be affected either by 
the date at which it was written, or the man who wrote it. 
Whether Moses de Leon wrote it in the thirteenth century, 
or Rabbi Simon Ben Jochai in the first, does not in the least 
affect its intrinsic value; any more than the intrinsic value 
of the Pentateuch would be affected if it could be conclu¬ 
sively proved that it was written by Ezra, and not by Moses. 
It would none the less have been founded on tradition which 
had reached him, and written under inspiration; in the same 
way some of the apocryphal books of the Old Testament, as 
for instance the books of Enoch and Esdras, are quite as full of 
inspiration as any of the minor prophets ; but this can only be 
felt by each, as the divine afflatus which each book contains, 
may reach the reader according to his moral state. Thus one 
book will seem inspired to one man, to quite a different degree 
from that which it may appear to another, and no man can 
lay down a positive rule, and say this is inspired and this 
is not. If, in the foregoing remarks, I seem myself to have 
been doing this with regard to certain books, I do so with the 
reservation that I distinctly feel them to be so inspired, and 
am personally conscious of the divine afflatus in some and 
not in others; but I do not venture to apply my sensations 
on the matter to others. 

It has been necessary to make these remarks, because they 
suggest large fields of inquiry, that cap only be advantage¬ 
ously entered upon by those who have, by long and arduous 
moral discipline, prepared themselves tp seek confirmation of 
their experiences, and of the conclusions at which they have 
arrived, by an examination into the sacred writings and 
mystical records of all religions. They also form an essential 
introduction to considerations regarding the cosmogony of the 
world, the early history of man, and his obligations under 
the new conditions that have now overtaken him, which I 
am about to present to the reader. 


201 


CHAPTER XII. 


MASCULINE AND FEMININE ATOMIC ELEMENTS — SENTIENT AND NON- 
SENTIENT ATOMS — THE DEITY OF THE BIBLE, AS WELL AS OF FOR¬ 
MER SACRED RECORDS, MASCULINE AND FEMININE—EFFECT OF THE 
DIVINE MATERNITY ON MAN—REVELATION BY THE SPIRIT, WHICH 
IS FEMININE, A PERSONAL ONE—THIS MYSTERY CONTAINED IN THE 
•HIDDEN SENSE OF BOTH OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 

A fundamental difference exists between the atomic ele¬ 
ments of the masculine and feminine principles in nature. 
It is evident that this must be so; because, as a difference 
exists in the most external male and female forms, the 
atoms which compose them must be differently combined 
and arranged. 

It is a peculiarity of atoms, well known to chemists, that 
their properties or behaviour depend upon their arrangement, 
though their nature is not changed; thus,, the difference in 
constitution between a molecule of ozone, and one of oxygen, 
is absolutely imperceptible, but they have widely different 
properties. Why this should be so is a mystery which is 
perfectly unfathomable to science; and as science generally 
explains what it cannot understand by a name, it calls this 
“ allotropism.” Now the mystery of generation is to be found 
in the mystery of allotropism. 

The nature of the male molecule and of the female molecule 
is essentially the same, but they possess entirely different 
properties, and this is due to the arrangement of the atoms of 
which they are respectively composed. When, in the process 
of conception, these molecules combine, it depends upon the 
interlocking of their atomic particles whether the result is a 
male or a female. It is a mistake to suppose, because science 


202 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


has not been able to discover from any outward manifestation 
in the embryo, until parturition is far advanced, what the sex 
is to be, that this has not been determined from the begin¬ 
ning. The influence which controls this result is the great 
dual influence which pervades all nature, and which imparts 
to every object in it, even to those which we call inanimate,, 
its twofold sex-life. 

It was by the operation of this twofold principle that ex¬ 
ternal nature, as we see it, was called into existence; and it 
is by its constant operation that it is sustained. Its origin 
and source we call God. 

This sex-principle pervades the dynaspheric force atoms, 
which may be divided into two categories—those which are- 
sentient, and those which are not sentient. Non-sentient 
atoms are those which compose what we term inorganic matter, 
and pervade the material forces of which we are cognisant— 
such as electricity, material magnetism as distinguished from 
animal magnetism, light, heat, and so forth. Sentient atoms 
are those which operate in animal magnetism, in the will, 
intellect, and emotions; but they are graduated downwards 
in infinite variety to the non-sentient atoms, as animal life is 
linked by zoophytes to vegetable life. The lowest form of 
atoms which animate the human race, are in the shape of 
infusoria or predatory animalculse, corresponding in appear¬ 
ance to its worst vices and passions, for every thought and 
emotion is represented structurally in invisible substance; 
the highest and purest emotions and intellectual aspirations 
consist atomically of bisexual human beings, patterned after 
the shape of primal man. These, however, can only display 
their force in, and operate through, mortals here, who are 
struggling to regain the lost bisexual condition in a manner 
presently to be described. This is the new force of which it 
is the purport of this book to treat. It has only commenced 
to operate in the world within the last few years, excepting 
in very rare instances, but it was fully manifested in the 
person of Christ. What is called by theologians His second 
advent, consists in His personal operation through this bi¬ 
sexual force, in the organisms of those who, after long pre¬ 
paration, have received it, and invoke His presence by vir¬ 
tue thereof. Hitherto the purest force known consisted of 





MAGNETIC HEALING. 


203 


unisexual homuncules, and this force it is which operates 
generally in the organisms of all good and unselfish indi¬ 
viduals. These atomic male and female divided entities are 
susceptible of transmutation into bisexual human atoms; but 
they can be only thus transmuted by severe moral discipline 
and suffering on the part of those individuals who, having 
given themselves to the service of humanity, struggle to 
effect this organic change in the forces of which their own 
emotions, passions, and volitions consist. 

The person in whom this change has been accomplished, is 
conscious of it through the new sensations which begin to 
vibrate in his nervous centres—affecting more especially the 
solar plexus—by the inspirations by which they are accom¬ 
panied, and by which he can be guided in his everyday life; 
as well as by the new potency with which he finds himself 
endowed for the performance of his various duties, and the 
imparting of moral and physical vitality into the organisms 
of those who seek to approach these new conditions, and 
whose progress he is thus enabled to assist. He is also able 
in certain cases to heal disease, as I have myself experienced; 
but this only under a very powerful internal guidance, and 
in very special circumstances, as no man is a judge when, by 
an act of his own will, disease should be checked. Physi¬ 
cal malady often produces atomic structural changes of the 
highest moral value, and should be allowed to run its course 
for that purpose. It also produces death at a critical period 
of the soul’s history, when to prolong natural life would be 
to affect most injuriously the immortal body; but this is no 
reason why remedies, in which the forces consist of non¬ 
sen tient atoms, should not always be employed, because they 
act irrespective of human volition, and are controlled by the 
unseen agencies which operate through them, independently 
of the selfish ambitions, interests, or affections of human beings. 
The only magnetism which it is safe for one person to impart, 
to another, is that in which the atomic forms are bisexual, 
because they contain the Christ element, and because they 
refuse to be imparted, except where the volition is under 
divine control—in other words, the operator feels his will 
resolutely set against imparting it, except when he is inter¬ 
nally ordered to do so. The quality of a healing magnetism 


.204 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


which is imparted for purposes of pecuniary gain, is generally 
morally debased, sometimes containing atomic creatures of a 
ferocious and sanguinary moral type, which, although wonder¬ 
ful physical cures may be accomplished through their agency, 
continue to affect the soul long after it has left the body which 
had thus been temporarily healed. 

It is evident that these considerations must have an im¬ 
portant bearing on the origin and conditions of physical life. 

The hypothesis that because, where 36 atoms of carbon, 
26 of hydrogen, 4 of nitrogen, and 10 of oxygen, are found in 
combination, you get a substance exhibiting visible life, and 
call it protoplasm—which I believe is now being split up, and 
explained by the word “ plastogen ”—therefore protoplasm or 
plastogen is the source of this great twofold sustaining and 
-animating principle in nature, is the most stupendous fallacy 
which it has entered into the mind of man to conceive, 
though some have indulged it to the extent of expecting 
the day to come, when they will be able to make living 
protoplasm. 

Such a notion would not have been possible, had not the 
rational atomic structure of the persons holding this view 
been altogether disintegrated by overstrain, and by the entire 
repudiation of the controlling function which the atoms of 
the moral structure exercise, by divine prerogative, over those 
-of the reason. There can be no better illustration of the 
fantasies of which the human mind is capable, when left to 
itself, than the theory that protoplasm is the origin of life; 
and yet it is one which finds wide response among what are 
nailed “ the intelligent classes,” and who call those who can 
see a little further into the nature of matter than they can 
with their microscopes, Visionaries! Let them accept rather 
the teaching of the Psalmist than of these philosophers, 
when he says,—“ I am fearfully and wonderfully made : mar- 

* vellous are Thy works; and that my soul knoweth right 
‘ well. My substance was not hid from Thee, when I was 
‘ made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts 

* of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being 
4 unperfect; and in Thy book all my members were written, 
‘ which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was 
< none of them.” 


THE DIVINE BISEXUALITY. 


205* 


The principle of bisexuality is even in the amoeba, and it is- 
by virtue of it that it is enabled to multiply itself by fission. 

There is no more potent argument in favour of design in 
the order of the universe, than is supplied to us by the exist¬ 
ence throughout it of the sex-principle; and the fundamental 
truth that it emanated from a bisexual source, the Father and 
Mother of all Life, Two-in-One, finds expression, sometimes- 
mystically, sometimes in distinct language, in the most ancient 
of religions. I will confine myself to a very few illustrations 
in support of this assertion; but those who consider these- 
religions of value as a confirmation of its truth, will find it 
in them all, in one form or other. 

Thus in Buddhism there are two Paramitas, Up&ya and 
Prajna, which represent the Fatherly and Motherly principles. 
“From the union of Upaya and Prajnfi,” says an old Buddhist 
book, cited by Mr Hodgson, “proceeded the world.” 1 Prajn& 
is the exact equivalent of the Hebrew Chokmah and the 
Alexandrine word Sophia — Wisdom imaged as a woman. 
Up&ya is variously translated; its literal meaning is “ ap¬ 
proach.” 2 Upaya Prajnft with the Buddhists is similar to 
the Ardha Nari (literally half-woman) of the Brahmans— 
the Cosmos imaged as a bisexual God. 3 While in that 
most ancient religion of Accad which Professor Sayce has- 
been revealing to us, he tells us that “ it was believed that 
‘ Ana Sar was the male principle which, by uniting witli 
‘ the female principle (ana) ki-sar,” (the goddess of) the 
earth (and) the hosts of heaven, “produced the present 
‘ world. It was to this old elemental Deity that the great 
‘ Temple of Esarra was dedicated, whose son was said to be- 
‘ the God Ninip or Adar” 4 (the Word). 

A recognition of this truth is to be found in the Talmud* 
while the Kabbalah discourses on the subject very elaborately. 
Thus in the Sohar we find that from the boundless En Soph 
emanated the Sephiroth, consisting of masculine and feminine- 
principles, of which the first were Wisdom, represented by the 
divine name Jah (masculine), and Intelligence, Jehovah (femi¬ 
nine), and it is from a union of these, which are also called 
Father and Mother, that the remainder proceeded, or, accord- 


1 Hodgson’s Essays, p. 88. 
3 Hodgson’s Essays, p. 78. 


2 Buddhism in Christianity, p. 91. 
4 Hibbert Lectures, 1887, p. 125. 


206 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


ing to the same authority, “ When the Holy Aged, the con- 
‘ cealed of all concealed, assumed a form, he produced every- 
‘ thing in the form of male and female, as things could not 

* continue in any other form. Hence Wisdom, which is the 
‘ beginning of development, when it proceeded from the Holy 
‘ Aged, emanated in male and female, for Wisdom expanded, 
‘ and Intelligence proceeded from it: and thus obtained male 
‘ and female—viz., Wisdom the Father and Intelligence the 
‘ Mother—from whose union the other pairs of Sephiroth suc- 

* cessively emanated.” 1 

These are either masculine, feminine, or two - in - one. 
Thus “ love ” is masculine, “ justice ” feminine, and they are 
united in “ beauty,” the whole composing a figure somewhat 
after the Grand Man of Swedenborg, and each triad of Sephi- 
roths giving birth respectively to the intellectual, moral, and 
material worlds. There is, moreover, a trinity of triads, and, 
above all, a supreme trinity of crown, king, and queen. 

I mention this, not relying upon it in any way as an au¬ 
thority, but merely as illustrating what a prominent position 
the divine feminine held in the most ancient conception of 
the Deity—for whatever may be the date of the Kabbalah in 
its present form, there can be no doubt of the antiquity of 
the traditions which it contains. 

The Kabbalists to this day pray for “the reunion of the 
‘ Holy One, blessed be His name, and His Shechinah: I do this 
‘ in love and fear, in fear and love, for the union of the name 
‘ [masculine] m with rp [feminine] into a perfect harmony; ” 
for they imagine in their conceit that the afflictions of the 
race proceed, not from the fact that they have lost their 
biune God, but that He has lost His Shechinah, or feminine 
principle. 

“For some reason best known to themselves,” says Mr 
Macgregor Mathers, in his introduction to his very interesting 
work, ‘The Kabbalah Unveiled/ “the translators of the 
‘ Bible have carefully crowded out of existence and smothered 
‘ up every reference to the fact that the Deity is both mas- 
‘ culine and feminine. They have translated a feminine plural 
< by a masculine singular in the case of the word Elohim. 

* They have, however, left an inadvertent admission of their 

1 Sohar, iii. 290a. 


TEACHING OF THE KABBALAH. 


207 


< knowledge that it was plural, in Genesis i. 26, ‘ And Elohim 

* sa id, Let us make man.’ And again (verse 27), how could 

< Adam be made in the image of Elohim, male and female, 
4 unless the Elohim were male and female also ? The word 

* Elohim is a plural formed from the feminine singular ALH— 
4 Eloh —by adding IM to the word. But inasmuch as IM is 
‘ usually the termination of the masculine plural, and is here 

* added to a feminine noun, it gives to the word Elohim the 

* sense of a female potency united to a masculine idea, and 

* thereby capable of producing an offspring. Now we hear 
4 much of the Father and the Son, but we never hear anything 
4 of the Mother in the ordinary religions of the day. But in 
4 the Kabbalah we find that the Ancient of Days conforms 

< himself simultaneously into the Father and Mother, and thus 

* begets the Son. Now this Mother is Elohim. Again, we are 
4 usually told that the Holy Spirit is Masculine. But the 
4 word RVCH—Kuach—is feminine, as appears from the 
4 following passage of the Sepher Yetzirah, ‘ ACHTH RVCH 

* ALHIM CHUM—A Chath (feminine, not masculine) Ruach 
‘ Elohim Chiim — One is she, the Spirit of the Elohim of 

* Life.’ ,J1 

And again (page 25): “ This Sephira completes and makes 
4 evident the supernal Trinity. It is also called Ama, 

* Mother, and Aima, the great productive Mother, who is 

* eternally conjoined with Ab, the Father, for the mainten- 

* ance of the universe in order. Therefore is She the most 

* evident form in whom we can know the Father, and therefore 

* is She worthy of all honour. She is the supernal Mother, 

* coequal with Chokmah, and the great feminine form of God, 

* the Elohim, in whose image man and woman are created, 
4 according to the teaching of the Kabbalah, equal before God. 

* Woman is equal with man , and certainly not inferior to him , 
4 as it has been the persistent endeavour of so-called Chris- 
4 tians to make her. Aima is the woman described in the 
4 Apocalypse (ch. xii.) . . . She is the supernal Mother, as 
4 distinguished from Malkuth, the inferior Mother, Bride, 
4 Queen.” This inferior Mother, Bride, or Queen is, as will 
presently appear, the feminine principle of the Son, or the 
Word made flesh. I have thought it worth while to quote 

1 The Kabbalah Unveiled, p. 22. 


208 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


in full some passages from * The Kabbalah Unveiled 9 con* 
cerning the androgynous character of the Son, which will be 
found at the end of the Appendix. 

This truth was contained in the hidden meaning of the law 
which Moses gave his people, and in the arcana of number¬ 
less passages of the Old and New Testaments, especially in the 
Book of Job and the Eevelation. It was held by the mystical 
sect of the Nazarites, for it formed part of the lore which, 
they had received from the mystics of Egypt, Chaldea, and 
Persia; it was well known to the Essenes, who succeeded 
them, and to the Pythagoreans; while in the Orphic poems,. 
Zeus, who is “ one force, one spiritual being, great rector of 
all things,” is described as being at once a male and an im¬ 
mortal nymph. And again he calls Jupiter the divine hus¬ 
band and wife— Zev ? a(p>or)v <yevero, Zev<; a/jb/3pcoTo<; 
vvfifyr}. The Osiris-Isis of ancient Egypt, and the Iswara 
Prakriti of ancient India, represent the same truth. 

The twofold character of God was held by the Therapeuts 
and Gnostic sects, and it was not until the suppression of the 
latter that Christendom may be said to have lost its God,, 
and adopted the God of the Jewish Pharisees and Sadducees: 
the cruel, implacable, vindictive, unjust male monster, which 
exoteric Judaism created after its own image, and which was 
the hideous legacy they left to the civilised world on their 
own extinction as a nation. If the ignorance, bigotry, and 
cruelty of Christendom have made the Jew a martyr for well- 
nigh two thousand years, amply has he revenged himself 
upon it by presenting it with his God, as material out of 
which to invent a Trinity. 

Both Jews and Gentiles have yet to find the Infinite Father 
and Mother whom they have lost. Among a sect of the 
former, it is true, He exists theoretically in His twofold 
essence; but Christians have only a faint emblem of it in the 
person of the Virgin Mary, who, as the mother of Christ, 
occupies the same relative position to a minute fraction of 
Christendom—which still finds a profound mystical meaning 
in some of the dogmas of the Church—that Maya does, as th& 
mother of Gautama, to Buddhists; but to Christendom at 
large, this is not comprehended even as a symbol. 

In proportion ,as a Church loses the infinitely tender ele- 


THE INFINITE MATERNITY. 


209 


ment of the divine maternity, and substitutes for it the char¬ 
acter of an unjust judge, does it become harsh, self-righteous, 
and arrogant. We see evidence of this in what are called the 
evangelical sects of the West, whose hatred of Popery has led 
them to repudiate the feminine element in it. 

If we accept the idea of a Deity at all, as a great First 
Cause, or creative principle, it is surely rather a self-evident 
proposition than a mystery, that the twofold principle of life 
must emanate from Him, and that if He is our infinite Father 
He must also be our infinite Mother, though the idea is so 
foreign to us, that we have no pronoun in our language to 
attach to a bisexual being. 

To him who seeks his God by the light of this truth, will 
its substantial verity be revealed in ways of which he can 
little dream; for it is evident that a conception of the Deity, 
even if it be vague, which contains a vital truth, furnishes a 
foundation-stone for a living faith; and two incomprehen- 
sibles which form one, by virtue of a combination of two 
principles which we all understand, form a basis more solid 
to build upon, than three incomprehensibles which form one, 
by virtue of three principles which none of us understand. 
Beyond this no human mind, as at present constituted, can 
furnish to another any adequate conception of the great First 
Cause; though Churches have endeavoured to define Him, 
and have dared to stigmatise what they call pantheism, or 
the belief that His essence must be present everywhere, and 
that nothing can be where He is not, as error. That a dual 
principle should be all-pervading, and yet constitute a person¬ 
ality, is only incomprehensible to us, because we cannot eman¬ 
cipate ourselves from the false perceptions which attach to 
our limitations in time and space. And as, while these per¬ 
ceptions are relative to our senses, it is impossible that 
this should be otherwise, the revelation of His nature by 
God to man must always be a personal one, conveyed to 
his affections through the subsurface faculties which those 
affections can alone develop. 

Those to whom God has revealed Himself in His divine 
womanhood, become conscious of a new tenderness stealing 
over them, which embraces the whole visible world. The 
beauties of nature now become invested with an indescribable 

O 


210 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


attraction. The swelling hillsides, the craggy rocks, the 
undulating ocean, the rustling foliage, are all palpitating with 
God in a way they never did before; and the life which is 
in them seems to blend mysteriously with the affections. 
They do not need to be told that nature has a soul, for 
they feel themelves to be united in most loving sympathy 
with it. 

If this is the case with what is called “ inanimate creation,” 
how much more strongly is it the case with all living things! 
and how intense becomes the compassion and the yearning 
over the fellow-man, irrespective alike of colour, race, or con¬ 
dition in life! It was this Divine Feminine which spoke 
through Jesus, when He called the little children toward 
Him; when He refused to condemn the fallen woman; when 
He brooded as a mother over Jerusalem, and drew the beloved 
disciple to His bosom. It was this tenderness which evoked 
a response from the hearts of women, such as no prophet or 
teacher had ever evoked before, and prompted Him, in the 
moment of His supreme agony, to utter the sublime ejacu¬ 
lation, “ Father, forgive them; for they know not what they 
do.” 

It is this revelation of the divine maternity to the soul of 
man that brings with it a new sense of spiritual potency, and 
that enables those who have received it to exercise an inde¬ 
finable influence over those who are being prepared for its 
reception: it is the infusing of a new warmth into nature, 
the dawning of a new brightness upon the soul’s horizon, the 
palpitating of a new joy throughout all the being. To those 
who have rejected the theological Christ, and misunderstood 
His work, and His true relation to God and man, it is an 
inspiration which sweeps away old prejudices, and lifts the 
veil that has hidden the animating principle of His person¬ 
ality from our gaze. We see Him now, no longer through a 
glass darkly, but face to face, and we feel the infinitely sweet 
touch of a nature, in which the Divine Feminine has been de¬ 
veloped, and which can reach us through atomic sympathy 
by the appointed channels, because He was Himself once 
tempted in all points like as we are. 

It is by the light of this revelation that we can judge of 
the work of the great religious reformers and teachers of the 


THE FUNCTION OF CHRIST. 


211 


world; and while to some of them we accord a majesty of 
inspiration and a dignity of effort which claim our highest 
respect and veneration, we are enabled to perceive that 
though they in some instances recognised the existence of 
this principle, and taught it as a mystery, to none was given 
the highest illumination that it imparts. 

This internal illumination can only he attained by an 
occult union with the bisexual Deity, for which the world 
was not yet prepared, and for which the elements did not 
exist in nature. Therefore it was that the efforts of the 
mystics in this direction proved of comparatively little advan¬ 
tage to the world at large; and that the attempts of those 
who now seek by the methods which they employed, of asceti¬ 
cism, dirt, self-concentration, and so forth, to attain the same 
end, will be of no avail, unless they recognise the supreme 
function of Christ, as the divinely appointed channel by which 
this union can alone be won by the elements which He im¬ 
parted. Nevertheless He can visit those who have not so 
recognised Him, and the visitation will, sooner or later, con¬ 
vey the revelation. 

If the intelligent classes in Christendom understood that 
there was an esoteric sense in the letter of the Bible, and 
if this fact had been recognised as essential to its true com¬ 
prehension by the Church, materialism and scepticism would 
not have assumed the proportions they have attained during 
this century; and instead of searching for arguments to 
prove the scientific absurdity of Biblical statements, men 
would have devoted themselves rather to the task of dis¬ 
covering what that inner meaning was. 

If the Churches had not lost the inspiration of the Holy 
Spirit, that can only operate in man through the Divine 
Feminine, which Christ was the first to embody on earth, 
they would have been able to oppose a barrier to the flood of 
infidelity which now threatens the submergence of all reli¬ 
gion ; and it is with the object of urging all those who are 
animated by a sincere love for their fellows, to search for this 
hidden wisdom, not in the Bible alone, but in their own 
hearts, that this book is written. 

So long as those who regard the Bible as an authority, 
attempt to meet the conclusions of science by clinging to the 


212 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


literal interpretation of records, adapted in their outward 
form to the ignorant, credulous, and superstitious conditions 
which existed among the common people three thousand 
years ago, so long will they get worsted in their endeavours, 
and build up scaffoldings of fallacies for their opponents to 
pull down. 

When, on the other hand, there are to be found in those 
records concealed verities, which are only true to those to 
whom they have been revealed, and which therefore make 
no appeal to the unenlightened reason of those who seek to 
dictate to the world, from the lofty summits of their darkened 
intelligence, these latter are deprived of all the weapons of 
argument or demonstration, and are perforce driven to silence, 
or to the more congenial armoury of gibes and sneers. 

I have more than once remarked that the religion of the 
future will be founded on personal revelation and personal 
experience.) It will not be a subject which can be discussed 
in the schools, nor ventilated in the public press, nor defined 
by Convocation in catechisms. The only catechism which 
the religious man, animated by the quickening life that is now 
descending, needs, his own conscience will formulate ; the 
only doctrines are those which will be shown him by the 
effort of doing the will of his Father ; the only demonstrations 
upon which he will rely to convince the unbelieving, will be 
“ the demonstrations of the Spirit with power ”; and the force 
of his arguments will lie in the force of his sympathies. 

He will draw men to him, not by “the enticing words 
of wisdom which man speaketh,” but by the magnetic attrac¬ 
tion of his atomic elements, which are the same in their na¬ 
ture as those which enable men and women to attract each 
other, or, in other words, to fall in love; but are altogether 
different in their properties and behaviour, as those who are 
searching into the mysteries of allotropism will understand 
to be possible. 

Bead only by the light of the external meaning of the 
word, the first few chapters of Genesis are not only opposed 
to all the conclusions of science, but to common-sense: or, as 
Origen says, “What person in his senses will imagine that 
‘ the first, second, and third day, in connection with which 


THE INNER SENSE. 


213 


* morning and evening were mentioned, were without sun, 

* moon, and stars ?—nay, that there was no sky on the first 
‘ day ? Who is there so foolish and without common-sense 

* as to believe that God planted trees in the garden of Eden 

* eastward, like a husbandman; and planted therein the tree 

* of life, perceptible to the eyes and to the senses, which gave 

* life to the eater thereof; and another tree which gave to the 
‘ eater thereof a knowledge of good and evil ? I believe that 

* everybody must regard these as figures, under which a recon- 

* dite sense is concealed.” 

I will therefore give such of the inner sense of these chap¬ 
ters as has been shown me, premising that though it is in 
some extent supported by the Kabbalah, it is in no way drawn 
from it, though its confirmation is not without its value. 
Nor would I enter upon a subject so recondite, were it not 
necessary to do so, for the purpose of explaining the origin of 
the moral malady from which the world is suffering, in order 
to elucidate the nature of the remedy to be applied, for it is 
impossible to cure a disease, unless it be in the first instance 
diagnosed, and this diagnosis involves a glance at the early 
history of the planet, the story of its creation, and of the evils 
which befell it. 

At the same time, I make no claim upon the credulity of 
my readers, nor expect those to believe me who hear no 
whisper within them, urging them to make the experiments 
here suggested for verification; but some there may be, so 
internally prepared already, that they will desire to respond 
at once to the call to consecrate themselves to the life which 
is here proposed. And to those it will be shown how they 
may extricate themselves from the worldly complications 
which may seem to bar the way to the absolute self-sur- 
rendry which it demands; or how, at all events, to manage 
their lives in the midst of their surroundings, as God may 
direct, with the view to their ultimate emancipation. For, 
however vaguely hitherto they may have been conscious of 
the influence in their affairs of an overruling Providence, 
however insufficiently they may have found guidance and 
direction when sought for in difficulty, when once they have 
decided to allow nothing to interfere with an immediate re- 


214 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


sponse to the voice within them, all doubt and uncertainty 
on this head will cease. God will prove to them that He 
exists by unmistakable evidence, that He hears, that He 
answers, that He directs, that He consoles, that He sympa¬ 
thises. But to obtain this consciousness, the dearest earthly 
affections must be sacrificed, the most trying ordeals must 
be endured, the most intense faith must be exercised, the 
most unflinching courage displayed, and a fortitude & toute 
tprcuvc must be exhibited. 

The words of Christ, which have never been acted upon 
yet, must be put in force now: * For if any man come to me 

* and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, 

* and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot 

* be my disciple.” 

Even now “the abomination of desolation spoken of by 
Daniel the prophet,” is “ standing where it ought not,” as it 
was prophesied by Christ that it would, and many are coming 
in His name, saying, “ Lo, here is Christ, or lo, He is there.” 
It is time, therefore, for those who are in the Judaea of the the¬ 
ologies of Christendom, to flee to the mountains of spiritual 
truth, and this they can do by discovering each for himself 
where the true Christ is; but to those alone will He reveal 
Himself, who literally follow His precepts—which are now 
ignored—and who are prepared to sacrifice everything they 
hold dear, to find Him. 

As spiritual impressions and mediumistic communications 
increase, will the difficulty become greater, for the evil ones 
take advantage of the ignorance and credulity of those they 
can influence directly, to speak in the name of Christ, and to 
“ show signs and wonders, and to seduce, if it were possible, 
even the elect.” There is no way of escaping from deception, 
except by efforts of verification, which will involve tremendous 
personal sacrifice. Should those who have made such efforts 
find, as the result of them, that what is here written contains 
error, I should be the first to co-operate with them in the at¬ 
tempt to correct it; for I make no claim for it, except that 
it is the highest truth that I have been able to reach. I am 
well aware that it is rudimentary. It is not until such an 
effort has been made, that any one is in a position to search 





QUALIFICATION FOR CRITICISM. 


215 


for the hidden wisdom contained in those sacred records, 
which one class of minds regards now with a blind unbelief, 
and another with an equally blind credulity; and to estimate 
at their true value such interpretations as may be submitted 
to them. 

Any criticisms, therefore, which may be offered upon the 
interpretations of sacred records I am now about to offer, by 
persons who have not fulfilled those conditions, are absolutely 
worthless. 

















































































































































PART II. 



























































































































































































































































































CHAPTER XIII. 


THE GENERATION OF UNIVERSES—FIRST CHAPTER OF GENESIS DESCRIBES 
THE CREATION BY EMANATION OF A PREVIOUS UNIVERSE—ANALYSI8 
OF ITS HIDDEN MEANING — THE REBELLION OF LUCIFER — ARCH¬ 
ANGELS OR SERAPHIM, AND ARCH-DEMONS OR 8IDDIM—THE FIRST 
ADAM, OR ADAM CADMON. 

Universes come into being under the fixed, orderly, and 
predetermined operation of law. They are not the result of 
arbitrary acts, or catastrophic interventions of Providence, 
but of a process of combined emanation and creation, or fash¬ 
ioning, which is in eternal and infinite progression, through 
the agency of other universes and their inhabitants. For as 
life is eternal, and matter is indestructible, and as life is two¬ 
fold, and therefore generative, procreation is incessant, and 
its manifestation is by emanation. 

The faculties and potencies of the loftiest orders of beings 
on the highest universes are inconceivable by man, as is the 
material of which those universes are composed, which would 
not be cognisable to his present senses. None of the heavenly 
bodies, therefore, that we see are in this category; but they 
are, like our own earth, emanations from these unseen uni¬ 
verses. The scientific theory of the nebular hypothesis, and 
of the gaseous incandescence which was the primal substance 
out of which they took form, is, so far as our senses are con¬ 
cerned, in the main correct; but even in that condition they 
were only the outward manifestation of an unseen archetype. 
The connection between these two conditions of the same 
universe is inseparable; their interaction is incessant, and 
their dependence upon each other absolute. But it varies in 
degree, so that in some instances the difference between the 


220 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


Outer manifestation and its archetype is apparently very great, 
and in others scarcely perceptible. 

These conditions depend on those of the universes from 
which they emanated, and on the intelligences which con¬ 
trolled their development and evolution. These intelligences, 
who are the agents of the divine will and operation, are in 
atomic affinity with the universe which is called into exist¬ 
ence, through their fertilisation of the atomic particles com¬ 
posing the substances of those materials, which first take the 
form to human consciousness of incandescent gases. 

This cosmic ether, or biod, or biogen, or protyle, or by 
Whatever name it may be called, is, in fact, world-seed; 1 
each atomic germ-cell containing in its essence a twofold 
inasculine and feminine principle. These evolve, according 
to the conditions which presided over their generation, and 
these again differ infinitely in their variety. Hence there are 
no two worlds alike. 

This is the “ fiery cloud ” of Professor Tyndall, and when 
he says that “ human mind itself, emotion, intellect, will, and 
all their phenomena,” were once latent in it, he catches a 
glimpse of a great truth. 

The processes of generative emanation, as well as of sub¬ 
sequent evolution, are protracted over a period of almost 
unimaginable duration. 

The foundation of a universe under these conditions is 
recorded in the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis. It 
was an emanation from the infinite Elohim, or Two-in-One, 
through the agency of the Elohim, a race of beings of an 
inconceivably high type, inhabiting a universe beyond our 
ken, but whose life and potency are visible to us in the sun 
of our own system. They are one of the angelic hosts, of 
whom ten, according to the Kabbalah, compose the “ world of 
formation.” The angelic hosts — like all beings in their 
essence—are bisexual. 

The world which was called into existence through their 
operation was prior to our earth. It was formed of substance 
beyond the range of our cognisance, and took countless ages 
to evolve before it was ready to receive the race which was 
prepared for it, called Adam in the Bible—and “ Adam Cad- 

1 The world-seed is the Golden Germ of the Rig Veda. 


THE GENESIS OF A UNIVERSE. 


221 


mon ” in the Kabbalah, to distinguish it from the subsequent 
race of the same name—which is, in fact, only the Hebrew, 
word for red earth, and who were patterned bisexually afte^ 
the Elohim. 

It is not possible with our limited faculties to form any. 
mental image of the nature by which this race was sur¬ 
rounded, because every object in it, animate or inanimate, 
was, so to speak, an eidolon —that is to say, the representation, 
of an idea. 

The classification of these is indicated in the distinction, 
drawn between those brought forth by the waters and those 
brought forth by the earth, also between those that had 
“ souls ” and those of which this is not said. Thus we are. 
told that God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the 

* herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his 

* kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth.” This repre¬ 
sented one class of moral and intellectual conceptions, and 
physical faculties and energies; and again, “ Let the waters 
bring forth abundantly the moving thing that hath soul,” 
represents another class; and “let the fowl fly above the 
earth in the open firmament of heaven,” has reference to 
those forces which are connected with the operation of the 
will-principle, represented by the word firmament; but it is 
impossible for us, with our finite perceptions, to form any 
notion of the character of the potencies, faculties, conceptions, 
and ideas here indicated. Thus the expression rendered by 
our translators “ great whales ” represents another class; and 
the things brought forth by the earth, “ the living creature • 
after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything 
that creepeth on* the earth after his kind,” another class. 

The repetition that everything was after its respective 
kind, is an accentuation of the distinctions of the different 
principles contained in these ideas. Lastly came man, repre¬ 
senting the divine idea, and controlling the forces, moral and 
intellectual, which pervaded the nature over which he was 
given dominion; and to whom was given, together with the 
superior animal forms representing the highest conceptions, 
the principles symbolised by the herbs, the trees, and their 
fruits, as moral sustenance. The whole of nature being, as it 
were, a book, representing the sublimest truths ip. a pictorial 


222 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


form, of the divine life and love principles, living, moving, 
and having their being in the bosom of the infinite Father 
and Mother of all, and being, in fact, an embodiment of the 
creative fiat or word, 1 and of the Divine Masculine and Femi¬ 
nine principles. 

That the emanation occurred through the operation of 
these principles in the Elohim, through whom it took form, 
is indicated in the first verse, “ By wisdom God created the 
heavens and the earth.” 2 The word “ heavens ” here signifies 
force, and “ earth,” substance. It is a fact well known to those 
conversant with the ancient religions, and with mystical in¬ 
terpretation generally, that force is deemed to be masculine, 
and substance feminine, whether it be solid or liquid. Hence 
we have the earth called Prakriti, or the Mother, in the Yedas; 
and water is almost always symbolised by a goddess in the 
old mythologies, as in Zoroastrianism by Anahita, and in the 
Kabbalah by Aima, “ the great sea.” 

The Divine Feminine principle represented by “ substance ” 
is love. The Divine Masculine principle represented by 
“force” is operation. In other words, the divine wisdom, 
love, and operation, which are ever present in the infinite 
Elohim, acting upon and through the representative Elohim, 
called into existence a universe, by forming a conjunction of 
atoms appropriate to its new conditions, and which emanated 
from them. 

The statement that “ the earth was without form, and void; 
and that darkness was upon the face of the waters,” signifies 
that the bisexual principle was not yet in operation. “ The 
Spirit”—or Ruach—“of God moving upon the face of the 
waters,” signifies the quickening by the divine potency of the 

1 According to the Hindoo cosmogony, Prajapati, getting tired of his soli¬ 
tude, “emits,” that is to say, draws forth from himself, everything that exists, 
or who begets it, after having divided himself into two, the one half male, the 
other half female.—Barth’s Religions of India, p. 69. 

Irenaeus, speaking of our own universe, says, “God made the world by 
means of the Word and Wisdom” (Haer., 4. 28). 

2 The word Berashith, which Onkelos, Le Septagius, and others, including 
our own translators, render “in the beginning,” is translated in four different 
ways by Grotius, Tertullian, Rabbi Bochai, and Simeon respectively; but the 
Jerusalem Targum, which may be esteemed the highest authority, renders it 
“ by wisdom.” 


THE LOST ORB. 


223 


feminine principle in the universe. “ And God said, Let there 
be light: and there was light,” signifies that the divine life now 
animated the universe. Hence John says, “ And the life was 
the light of men.” The division of the light from the dark¬ 
ness signifies the division between the bisexual principle oper¬ 
ant in God, and the bisexual principle which was to be operant 
in the universe, under the conditions of free-will. The “ firma¬ 
ment,” by means of which this division was brought about, 
signifies the principle of free-will. The collection of the 
waters into one place, and the appearance of dry land, signi¬ 
fies the conditions under which the bisexual principle was to 
operate in nature. The passage from the 15th to the 19th 
verses contain arcana in regard to the processes of love, 
wisdom, and operation, represented by the “ greater ” and the 
“ lesser ” light, and the stars in the firmament, or free-will, 
by means of which three great principles, operating in free¬ 
dom, the universe was to be governed. 

This is the universe which has given rise to the tradition 
of the fallen orb, to which allusion is made by the prophet 
Isaiah in the 14th chapter, where he says, “How art thou 
4 fallen from heaven, 0 Lucifer”—or Day-star—“son of the 

* morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst 
4 weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I 

* will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the 
4 stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congre- 
4 gation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the 
4 heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High. Yet 
4 thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. 
4 They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and con- 
4 sider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to 
4 tremble, that did shake kingdoms; that made the world as a 
4 wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened 
4 not the house of his prisoners ? ” The special interest of 
this passage consists in the fact that it is a prediction of the 
judgment which is to overtake the powers of darkness on the 
occasion of the Messianic advent as distinctly foreshadowed 
in the Kevelation, which will clearly appear when we come 
to consider the 20th chapter of that book. 

The story of the rebellion of Lucifer and his host, of their 
habitation in a lower world, of their invasion into this one, 


224 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION, 


of the archangels who remained loyal, and were saved, together 
with that part of the inhabitants of the orb who did not take 
part in the rebellion, with many legends of great interest, are 
to be found in the sacred literature of the Hebrews, and 
especially in the Book of Enoch, while the Bible contains 
many allusions to it. Thus the Psalmist says, “ I said, Ye are 
‘ gods; and all of you the children of the Most High: yet ye- 
1 shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.” And 
Jude, quoting from the Book of Enoch, thus alludes to this- 
event: “ And the angels which kept not their first estate, but 
‘ left their own habitation, He hath reserved in everlasting 
‘ chains, under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day; ” 
and again,—“ Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with 
‘ the devil, he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not 
‘ bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord 

* rebuke thee.” The greater part of the Eevelation contains 
in its hidden meaning the narrative of events which have 
transpired, and will yet transpire, in the world of which the 
first chapter of Genesis records the creation, sometimes under 
a very thin veil; as, for instance, where it is said, “ And there 
‘ was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against 

* the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and pre- 

* vailed not; neither was their place found any more in 
‘ heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old ser- 
4 pent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole 
‘ world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were 
‘ cast out with him.” And says Peter, “If God spared not 

* the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and de- 
‘ livered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto 
1 judgment.” And Job, comparing the people of this world 
with those of its predecessor, says, “ Shall a man be more- 

* pure than his Maker ? Behold, He put no trust in His 

* servants; and His angels He charged with folly: how 

* much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foun- 

* dation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth ? ” 1 
The enormous structural difference between existing man,, 
whose bodily tenement is of clay, and the nature of the fallen 
angels is here alluded to. They were, in fact, patterned closely 
after the divine image, with an absolute freedom of will, and 

1 Job, iv. 17*19. 


FALLEN AND UNFALLEN ANGELS. 


225 


powers of a stupendous character. In accordance with the 
divine method of rule, there was one among them in whom 
supreme authority was vested. His faculties transcended 
anything of which we have any idea, and in him origi¬ 
nated the idea that his will, which was free, was his own, 
and not God’s freedom acting in him. The consequences 
which resulted to humanity from this false conception we 
shall see later. It produced a conflict in the “ Day-star,” to 
use Isaiah’s nomenclature, and there was “war in heaven,” 
Michael and those who clung to the true conception of free¬ 
will, rebelling against the authority of the Prince of Dark¬ 
ness, who is since known as Satan. It was the supreme 
position with which the latter was endowed, which gave rise 
to the tradition, recorded in Jude, that Michael, disputing 
with Satan “ about the body of Moses, durst not bring against 
him a railing accusation,” but could only say, “The Lord 
rebuke thee.” 

This passage is deeply interesting, as throwing light upon 
the relations which subsist between the fallen and the un¬ 
fallen parts of the preceding, or Elohistic, universe. Though 
divided into two hostile camps, and though it underwent a 
violent atomic dislocation on the occasion of the conflict which 
took place between the opposing will-principles, it still forms 
but one universe, and the collision continues between the 
antagonistic forces; nor can the magnetic contact by which 
they are united be severed. This contact is both direct and 
indirect. Direct as between the two hostile portions in the 
region they occupy, and indirect through both the. visible and 
invisible portions of our universe. 

And here I feel compelled to make a statement which it 
has been necessary thus to lead up to, but which does, in 
fact, furnish us with a key to the mystery of our complex 
earthly existence. 

Paces are generated through a primal pair. The primal 
pair, in the case of the world preceding our own, were called 
Adam, or Adam Cadmon. And it was the perversion of the 
will-principle by this Adam Cadmon, who was supreme in his 
universe, which produced the catastrophe. In other words, 
the first Adam mentioned in the Bible, has become the Devil 
or Satan, who wages perpetual war against his Maker, and 

P 


226 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


whose rebellion was succeeded by an atomic dislocation in 
his outer organism, which involved a divorce from his own 
feminine complement; and by a conflict between the male 
and female principles in that region of the fallen universe 
in which he still exercises rule. Nevertheless in its deep 
interior the bisexual principle remains intact. 

It is important that this should be understood, because 
there has been in the minds of intelligent people, a very 
natural reaction against a narrative which, taken in its literal 
sense, seems so fantastic, that with the rejection of the talk¬ 
ing serpent, has followed that of a personal devil, largely, 
because he is invested in the popular imagination with horns, 
hoofs, and a tail; but the whole Bible teems with references 
to this personality, and it stands to reason that, to use Pauls 
expression, if “ the rulers of the darkness of this world ” exist 
at all, there must be among them some who are more power¬ 
ful and intelligent than others. In the Talmud and Kabba¬ 
lah these have names, just as among the Seraphim or unfallen 
angels we have the archangels Michael, Gabriel, and others. 
So there are arch-demons, and, besides Satan, we read in the 
New Testament of Beelzebub and Apollyon, and in the 
Talmud of Ashmedai, Samael, and others. Ashmedai is the 
Asmodeus of Tobit, iii. 8, vi. 14, &c. The Kabbalah gives us 
a list of ten archangels and ten orders of angels, and of ten 
arch-demons and ten orders of demons. 

But the ruler of all is generally known as Satan, and his 
power may be inferred from the verse, “ And God said, Let us 

* make man in our image, after our likeness ; and let them have 

* dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the 

* air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every 

* creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” This signifies 
that the first Adam, or Adam Cadmon, was invested with 
powers almost equal to the Deity—that he could control all 
the principles represented in the nature by which he was 
surrounded, and that he possessed the divine attributes to 
such a high degree, that when his will became perverted, he 
imagined himself to be equal, if not superior, to God. 

On this insane delusion taking possession of his mind, and 
the Divine Feminine principle within him having become per¬ 
verted, he represented instead the infernal feminine or lust 


SATAN AND THE SIDDIM. 


227 


principle, as his name Satan implies. This will appear later, 
when we come to consider the threefold nature of the Deity. 

Henceforth the object of the internals was to close the 
creation which was about to come into existence—and which 
is our world—to the operation of the Divine Feminine, and 
to substitute for it the infernal feminine; and the struggle 
between the Seraphim and the Siddim, 1 or the unfallen 
and the fallen angels, has been carried on in man over 
this principle ever since. For the Seraphim never lost their 
divine bisexual nature in their outer organisms, and are the 
guardian angels of our planet. Satan, on the other hand, 
controls that section of the world which fell with him, and is 
regarded by the Siddim as the deity—a delusion in which 
he is himself fixed. Hence all the abominations perpetrated 
through their agency are justified on the highest moral 
grounds; and the effect of their inspiration in the religions 
of the world is to be seen in the atrocities which have been 
committed in the name of religion, as, for instance, those 
under the Inquisition. All crime becomes lawful as the 
means to the end, which appears to their perverted ima¬ 
ginations to be divine. Their strongholds upon our earth 
are the religions which flourish largely under their ?egis, 
and, as we shall see later, especially the Churches of Chris¬ 
tendom. 

It has been necessary to dwell upon the nature of the 
catastrophe which overtook the Elohistic universe, because 
our own fortunes are inextricably bound up with it; and a 
knowledge of its history and present condition, forms an indis¬ 
pensable preliminary to an apprehension of the nature of the 
destiny reserved for our own world, and of the struggles and 
duties which await us. It has also been necessary, because it 
is to be hoped that the attempt to reconcile a chronicle of 
cosmogony which has no reference to our own world—except 
indirectly—with the conclusions of modern science, will be 
abandoned, as one of the most fatal blows which can be struck 
at those parts of the Bible which contain divine truth in their 
hidden meaning. It gives scoffers most unnecessary occasion 
for satire, so thin, that it would lose all its point if the subject 
satirised was not considered sacred; and it brings the intelli- 
1 Note for the origin of the words Satan and Siddim. See Appendix. 


228 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


gence of those who cling to the external sense of the record, 
from habit, prejudice, or panic, as the case may be, into a 
contempt which even they might be spared. 

The effect of the violent shock which this former universe 
sustained, as the result of the conflict between the- Seraphim 
and the Siddim, was to shatter it, in so far as the original ar¬ 
rangement and combinations of its atomic structure was con¬ 
cerned, and it passed through a stage corresponding to what 
we call death, shedding off its grosser atomic particles, while 
those which were finer, rearranged themselves according to 
their moral attraction, and ultimately formed themselves into 
two widely opposite systems, of extreme good and extreme 
bad, with an intermediate region of a mixed character. 

These three regions are connected atomically with three 
corresponding regions in our own invisible universe; and 
although we on earth are practically cut off from direct 
contact with the inhabitants of the previous world, there have 
been in former periods exceptional instances of visitations by 
them. Thus we have records of Satan appearing to Job and 
to Christ; and of messages borne to it by Gabriel to Zacha- 
rias and to the Virgin Mary; and upon two occasions to 
Daniel, in order to explain visions to him; while Michael is 
mentioned as “the great prince that standeth up for the 
people, 1 ” with especial reference to a period of moral and 
physical revolution which was in store for our own universe. 



229 


CHAPTER XIV. 

SECOND CHAPTER OP GENESIS DESCRIBES CREATION BY EMANATION OP 
OUR WORLD—ANALYSIS OP ITS HIDDEN MEANING—THE CREATION 
OP BISEXUAL MAN—ANCIENT BELIEFS IN HIS ANDROGYNOUS NATURE 
—STORY OF HIS PALL—AND SEPARATION INTO TWO DISTINCT SEXES 
—STRUCTURAL CHANGES CONSEQUENT THEREON. 

The narrative of the creation of the world which succeeded 
that which underwent atomic dislocation, under the circum¬ 
stances above described, commences at the fourth verse of the 
second chapter of Genesis. It contains in its internal mean¬ 
ing a description of the process by which the new generative 
emanation took place, which forms the basis of existing 
matter. 

On the dislocation of the previous world, its physical ddbris , 
consisting of those grosser particles which it had shed off at 
the time of its dissolution, now solidified into cosmic ether, 
or a “ fiery cloud ” of unparalleled density, and formed world- 
seed of a debased and corrupted quality, composing a matrix, 
out of which should condense a nature of a type correspond¬ 
ing to the unhappy mixed conditions to which it owed its 
origin. 

It will be observed that the narratives of the two creations 
bear no similarity to each other. There is no mention in the 
second of the number of days in which the world was made, 
nor of the order of creation; and especially is the distinction 
marked in all that concerns the creation of man. We are 
not told that he was made in God’s own image, nor that 
he was given dominion over the nature by which he was 
surrounded, as was the case with the preceding Adam. The 
narrative commences abruptly— 


230 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


“ These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth, 
in the day that Jehovah Elohim made the earth and the 
heavens.” “ These are the generations of the heavens and the 
earth,” signifies the nature of the generative process by means 
of which force and substance—in other words, “ matter in 
motion ”—underwent violent transformation in the case of the 
world, whose creation is now being described; in contradis¬ 
tinction to the process of gentle emanation from the Elohim, 
by means of which the preceding world had been called into 
existence. 

“In the day that Jehovah Elohim made the earth and the 
heavens.” The transposition of substance and force indicates 
the nature of the new atomic combination, which was effected 
“ under the immutable operation of divine law, by the com¬ 
bined, but, at the same time, antagonistic, agency of the 
angels, fallen and unfallen, of the former universe.” 

“ And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, 
and every herb of the field before it grew,” signifies the prior 
existence in another form of substance, of the nature which 
was now being created, and indicates the slow and gradual 
character of the process. 

“Eor Jehovah Elohim had not caused it to rain upon the 
‘ earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there 
‘ went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face 
4 of the ground,” signifies that the only feminine principle 
which vivified nature, was that which ascended to it through 
the substance of the previous world—man not having yet 
been formed—and the new feminine principle which was to 
descend through him not having yet done so. 

“ And Jehovah formed man out of the dust of the ground ”— 
in other words, fashioned Adam out of Adamah—signifies that 
the substance of which he was made, was far more gross and 
material than that out of which the previous Adam had been 
formed, and closely allied in its atomic structure to the nature 
by which he was surrounded. It is worthy of note that in 
the first instance the Hebrew word meaning “ created ” is used, 
and in this case another word, which can best be translated 
by “ fashioned,” is employed, indicating a different process of 
formation. 

“ And breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” signi- 


THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 


231 


fies that this process of fashioning was by exhalation—that 
is, that the divine afflatus or pneuma, passing through the 
Elohim into the Seraphim, contained within it the vital prin¬ 
ciple by which the new man was to be animated. It also 
indicates that these principles differed in quality from those 
of which the former race had been composed. 

“ And man became a living soul,” signifies that now, instead 
of partaking of the nature of the Elohim, as in the first in¬ 
stance, he partook of the nature with which the creeping 
things of the water and of the earth, who were called “ living 
souls,” had been endowed in the former creation; for atomic 
affinity existed between him and the beings of the fallen 
world, as well as between him and the Seraphim. 

“And Jehovah planted a garden eastward in Eden, and 
there he put the man whom he had formed,” signifies a spe¬ 
cially protected region set apart for man, and indicates the 
relation which it bore to the rest of the universe. 

“And out of the ground made Jehovah Elohim to grow 
every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food,” 
signifies that in this region was provided all the moral sus¬ 
tenance necessary for man, to enable him to accomplish the 
high purpose for which he had been placed in it. 

“ The tree of life also in the midst of the garden,” signifies 
the mystery in which lies hidden the secret of the creative 
potency, and the conservation of energy by atomic combina¬ 
tion, which renders impossible the destruction of the human 
personality. In other words it typified the bisexual body. 1 

“The tree of knowledge of good and evil,” signifies the 
knowledge of the fact that the newly created world was 
already in atomic contact with both regions of the previous 
world, and in danger from the one that had fallen. It typified, 
therefore, the separated body. 

“ The river that went out of Eden to water the garden,” and 
“ was parted into four heads,” signifies the divine life-current, 
which, flowing from the specially protected centre of the 
universe, divided into four vitalising streams; one flowing 

1 In the Kabbalah it is said, “ But whensoever the colours are mingled to¬ 
gether then is He called Tiphereth, and the whole body is formed into a tree 
(the Autz Ha-Chaiim or tree of life), great and strong, fair and beautiful.” 
Dan. iv. 11; p. 336, Mather’s Kabbalah. 


232 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


into the surface of so-called inorganic nature, one into the 
vegetable creation, one into the inferior animal creation, and 
one into man. 

“And Jehovah Elohim took Adam, and put him in the 
garden of Eden to dress it,” signifies the duties and functions 
which now devolved upon man in the nature by which he 
was surrounded, with a view to its ultimate restoration to 
perfect conditions. 

“And Jehovah Elohim commanded the man, saying, Of 
* every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the 
‘ tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of 
‘ it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely 
‘ die,” signifies that if man wilfully opened himself to direct 
atomic contact with the beings of the lower world, he would 
imbibe a virus, which would prove destructive to his natural 
life, and result in the sexual separation of his body. 

“And Jehovah Elohim said, It is not good that man should 
be alone; I will make an help meet for him,” signifies that up 
to this time man had been unconscious of the feminine prin¬ 
ciple that had been unfolded within him, and that God was 
about to impart to him a consciousness of it, as without it it 
would not be possible for him to fulfil the great function that 
devolved upon him. 

“And out of the ground Jehovah Elohim formed every 
beast of the field, and every fowl of the air,” signifies that 
this creation differed from the one that preceded it by the 
composition of its atoms, which were nevertheless a reconsti¬ 
tution of those which had previously existed; but the process 
of this reconstitution had been slow' and gradual, having been 
evolutionary in its character, and having been developed from 
the principles of the ideas which had been contained in the 
representations of them in the previous world. They were, 
nevertheless, still the symbols of those ideas. 

“ And brought them unto Adam to see what he would call 
them: and whatsoever Adam called every creature, that was 
the name thereof,” signifies the apprehension by man of the 
symbolical meaning of the creation. 

“ And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of 
the air, and to every beast of the field: but for Adam there 
was not found an help meet for him,” signifies that the femi- 


THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 


233 


Time principle appropriate to man was not to be found in the 
lower animal creation—the feminine principle of which was 
•contained within itself. It also indicates the great difference 
which existed between man and the animal creation, the 
latter having evolved from pre-existing types, through the 
agency of the life-current flowing through the Elohim, and 
thence through the combined operation of the Seraphim and 
the Siddim, while the latter had been generated subse¬ 
quently by an altogether different process. For not only 
"was the feminine principle inferior in the animals, but it had 
become polluted; the new creation having from its outset 
suffered from the influence of the poison of the infernal fem¬ 
inine which pervaded its atoms, by reason of their affinity 
with the atoms of the fallen region of the previous world. 
Hence carnivorous and other disorderly species had evolved. 

It was the function of man by his efforts to regain the 
ground that had been lost, and this could only be achieved 
through the orderly operation of the combined masculine and 
feminine principles within him, and by abstention from 
the tree of knowledge of ^ood and evil, which contained 
within it the infernal principle that had become interwoven 
in the universe, by reason of the complex conditions under 
which it came into existence. In other words, it behoved 
him to avoid all contact with the Siddim. For as he him¬ 
self had been generated through the ultimate operation of 
the preceding human type, he was in atomic affinity with the 
lower intelligences; from invasion by whom he could only 
be saved by implicit obedience, and the preservation of the 
purity—with which he had been endowed—of the Divine 
Feminine principle. A specially protected region was there¬ 
fore set apart for his habitation, called “ the garden of Eden.” 

“And Jehovah Elohim caused a deep sleep to fall upon 

< Adam, and he slept: and He took one of his ribs, and closed 
4 up the flesh instead thereof ; and tfie rib, which Jehovah Elo- 

< him had taken from man, made He a woman, and brought 
“ her unto him.” 

This signifies the process by which the atomic elements 
constituting the feminine principle, which had been com¬ 
bined with those forming the masculine principle — thus 
rendering man bisexual—were so altered in their combina- 


234 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


tions, that without being internally disassociated, they could 
be externally separated. The nature of their new association 
being such that they could interweave themselves, or separate 
themselves at pleasure. Thus presenting the appearance 
either of a man and a woman apart; or of a man infused, as 
it were, hy a woman—the two forming one. This permeation 
of atoms by one another, being possible in the case of beings 
whose atomic structure differs essentially from ours as theirs 
did, or, in other words, were four dimensional. 

“And Adam said, This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of 
my flesh: she shall be called Islia, because she was taken out 
of Ish,” signifies the comprehension by man of the nature 
of the bisexual principle with which he was endowed, and 
which, although externally he might appear as two persons, 
rendered him substantially one; and the names which he gives 
these principles, signifies his perception of the fact that the 
feminine principle is contained within the masculine. 

“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, 
and shall cleave unto his wife,” signifies that these principles 
are absolutely inseverable, and are inherent in every man and 
every woman long before the moment of birth. Though 
neither may know in mortal life who the complementary 
being is, each person is born with an atomic structure, the 
particles of which are interlocked with those of the com¬ 
plementary being, and must be so to all time; for there is no 
such thing, either in this world, or those that are invisible— 
fallen or unfallen—as a being who is unisexual in essence, 
though all sense of bisexuality has long been completely lost, 
and almost the only external trace of it that remains is the 
male rudimentary breast. Nevertheless it is in this deeply 
seated principle that all our affections, emotions, and passions 
originate; and sooner or later the complementary being is 
found, with whom we are each internally, and as yet un¬ 
consciously, atomically interlocked, proving, if the scene of 
meeting be the upper world, a source of infinite joy; if 
the lower, a cause of intense misery. Hence the whole 
struggle of the Siddim is against bisexuality. 

It is not possible, however, for two beings who are thus 
interlocked, to pass into two opposite regions; for inasmuch 
as an internal attraction is constantly drawing their souls 


BISEXUALITY OF MAN. 


235 


together, though their bodies may be far apart, and inasmuch 
as the atomic quality of their affections or passions is essen¬ 
tially one, they always develop in the same direction. The 
upward or the downward tendency is common to both,, 
because they are essentially not two but one. Christ quoted 
the words here put by the inspired writer into Adam’s mouth > 
to the Pharisees, for He understood the profound truth which 
they contained, when He said: “ Have ye not read, that He 
‘ which made them at the beginning made them male and 
‘ female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and 
‘ motherland shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall 
‘ be one flesh ? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one 
‘ flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man 
‘ put asunder.” He does not say what the Church has joined 
together, or the priest hath joined together, but what God hath 
joined together; and the presumption of Churches and priests, 
that God joins the male and female principles together through 
their agency, betrays an ignorance equal to its arrogance. 

If Christ denounced an attempt to put them asunder— 
which is an impossibility—it was only because it was neces¬ 
sary, in the cause of morality, to meet this question on the 
low plane of His interrogators, and allow the allusion to have 
reference to external wives; but even here some of the 
Churches called by His name repudiate His teaching, and 
deliberately sanction adultery, by marrying those who are 
divorced, in express defiance of His command to the con¬ 
trary—and these they say solemnly, in a temple dedicated 
to Him, God has joined together. 

In point of fact, though it was not understood by the 
Pharisees, the bisexuality of man was held among the initiated, 
both by the Nazarites and afterwards by the Essenes, and 
is to be found alluded to in the apocryphal writings of the 
early Christian Church. Thus Cyril of Jerusalem calls “the 
Anointed” male and female; and in the second Epistle of 
Clement of Eome we find, “ The Lord Himself was asked by 
‘ some one when His kingdom should come; and He said, 
«‘ When the two shall be one, and the external as the internal, 
‘ and the male with the female, neither male nor female.’ ” 
Clement of Alexandria repeats the saying—“When Salome 
‘ asked, when these things of which she was asking should 


236 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


■* be known, the Lord said, Whensoever ye shall have trampled 
‘ down the garment of shame; and whensoever the two have 
"* become one, and the male with the female, neither male nor 
‘ female.” 1 

The explanation of Christ’s saying that in heaven there 
will be neither marrying nor giving in marriage, is evidently 
in allusion to the fact, that it would no longer be in the power 
of men to unite in a disorderly way, those who had been 
eternally divided by God. The popular idea that angels are 
sexless, can only be held by those who are entirely closed as 
to their subsurface, or supersensuous, vision ; but so many are 
■open now sufficiently as to their subsurface faculties to be 
convinced by their own experience and observation that this 
is a delusion, that it is scarcely necessary to insist upon a 
point which it is impossible to prove to those who cannot 
•see behind the veil. 

Those, however, who care to look into the testimony of 
ancient writers, will find much curious lore upon the sub¬ 
ject. Thus the Naassene is represented as a believer in man 
becoming androgynous when he is “passed over from the 

* earthy range of the nether world to the eternal substance 
'* above, where there is neither male nor female, but a new 

creature, which is androgynous.” 2 Simon Magus, in the 
‘ Great Announcement/ says, concerning a class of spiritual 
beings, that “ they possess a bisexual power and intelligence, 

* whence they form a mutual apposition . . . being one 

*. . . so it is, therefore, that likewise their manifestation, 

‘ while actually one, is found to be two; a bisexual being, 

* holding the feminine within itself.” 

This doctrine is to be found among the Pythagoreans, while 
Plato devotes many pages of his ‘ Symposium ’ to its elucida¬ 
tion. “ In the first place,” he says, “ the sexes were originally 
three in number, not two, as they are now. There was man, 

* woman, and the union of the two, having a name correspond- 

* ing to this double nature.” 

In the Egyptian ritual of the dead, perhaps the earliest 
known tradition on the subject, we find—“ I, Pa, appeared be- 

* fore the sun, when the circumference of darkness was opened; 

* I was as one among you (the gods). I know how the woman 

1 Strom., iii. 13. 2 Hippolytus, Ref. Hser., 5. 


BISEXUALITY OF MAN. 


2\3T 

‘ was made from the man.” It was taught by Zoroaster in the* 
‘ Arda Viral'* (iv.), in a mystic way; but it is' strongly in¬ 
sisted upon in the Kabbalah. Thus the Sohar tells us, “ Each- 
‘ soul and spirit, prior to its entering into this world, consists-. 

* of a male and female united into one being. When it de-- 
‘ scends on this earth, the two parts separate, and animate two 
‘ different bodies. At the time of marriage the Holy One — 

‘ blessed be He who knows all souls and spirits—unites them 
‘ again as they were before. And they again constitute one- 

* body and one soul, forming, as it were, the right and left of 
‘ one individual. Therefore there is nothing new under the- 
‘ sun. . . . This union, however, is influenced by the deeds 
‘ of the man, and by the ways in which he walks. If the 
‘ man is pure, and his conduct is pleasing in the sight of God, 

‘ he is united with that female part of his soul which was his 
‘ component part prior to his birth.” 1 The marriage here 
alluded to is that which takes place after death. So Rabbi 
ben Jochai talks of his death as entering into his nuptials 
(see Appendix). 

This view is maintained by many Jewish rabbis of the 
present day, outside of those who are learned in the Kabbalah, 
and finds expression in the Talmud, as, for instance, where 
the Rabbi Samlai says, “ Man is impossible without woman,, 
woman without man, and both without the Shechinah.” 

“ And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and 
were not ashamed,” signifies the absolute and essential purity 
of the divine bisexual life-principle. 

“ Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the 
field which Jehovah Elohim had made,” signifies that the in¬ 
vasion of the lower animal creation by the Siddim, enabled 
them to use it as a channel by which to approach man; for 
before man had appeared upon the world, it was already 
poisoned with ferocity and lust, with the exception of that 
region which had been specially set apart as the centre, from 
which the deliverance was to be achieved by man. 

“And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye 
shall not eat of every tree of the garden ? ” signifies the method 
of approach by which the Siddim sought to invade the 
feminine principle in man, and to introduce into his organism 
1 Sohar, i. 916. 


238 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


the impure forces which had been developed in the fallen 
world, where the bisexual principle had become debased, and, 
by the disorderly practices of the infernal feminine, had gen¬ 
erated the fatal passion of lust. 

It was by means of the introduction of this inverted sex- 
principle into the newly created universe that the Siddim 
sought to achieve its conquest, and thus extend the sphere of 
their own influence and domination. The story of what is 
known as “ the Fall ” records in allegorical language the suc¬ 
cess of this attempt. It is not necessary to describe, by giv¬ 
ing at length the internal signification of each verse, the 
method by which this was done. Enough has been written 
by way of interpretation, to indicate the nature of the veil by 
which the external sense shrouds the inner meaning, and to 
dispose for ever of the doubts and difficulties which arise in 
some minds, because they are unable to reconcile this mask 
of words, with either reason or common-sense. Suffice it to 
say, that the Siddim clothed themselves with atomic parti¬ 
cles drawn from the organisms of the lower animal creation 
of earth, and were thus able to make an intrusion into that 
part of the universe which, up to that time, had been the 
habitation of the infancy of the Adamic race, whose inter¬ 
course had been confined to the Seraphim, from whom they 
had emanated. 

This resulted in an unholy union between the celestial 
feminine, represented by Isha, and the infernal masculine, 
represented by the serpent. 

The effect of the impregnation of the pure feminine prin¬ 
ciple, by the virus thus injected into humanity through the 
lower animal creation, was to infect the divine bisexual life- 
current at the fountain-head in our world ; and the four rivers 
of the garden of Eden became polluted with a poison, preg¬ 
nant with increased disaster to the universe through which 
they flowed. 

The rush of this tainted torrent into nature, when once 
the sluice-gates were opened by sex-intercourse by the human 
race — represented by Adam and Eve — with the Siddim, 
was almost more than the delicate atomic structure of man 
could bear. He now perceived the consequences of his act, 
and he sought to protect himself from the destruction which 


THE FALL. 


239 


seemed about to overwhelm him, by increasing in some way 
his organic power of resistance to infernal invasion. 

This is indicated in the words, “And the eyes of them 
both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and 
they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons.” 
Nevertheless the effect of the introduction of an opposing 
current into the organism, threatened an absolute atomic 
wreckage. Man found himself between the opposite poles of 
an electric battery, and his extinction under existing circum¬ 
stances seemed imminent; for it was only by an atomic dis¬ 
location of the earthly human structure, tantamount to the 
physical death of man, that he could be assimilated to the 
organisms of the Siddim, and so become completely enslaved 
by them, unless he could protect himself from this fate, by 
acquiring the hidden knowledge concealed in the mystery of 
the tree of life. He would thus have gained not merely 
power to protect his life, but have augmented his faculties so 
enormously by infernalising the quality of the pure bisexual 
principle which it contained, that he would have become even 
more highly diabolised as the Siddim, and more potent for 
evil. Not only would this world have been lost, but the 
means provided in it for the salvation of the former one, 
would become instead the means of sinking it still lower. 

This danger is indicated in the verse, “ And Jehovah Elo- 

* him said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know 

< good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take 

< also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: therefore 
1 Jehovah Elohim drove him forth out of the garden of Eden, 

* to till the ground from whence he was taken.” It also signi¬ 
fies that the celestial or seraphistic conditions, by which man 
had been surrounded for his protection, had become intoler¬ 
able to him, and that he would now find himself condemned 
to a perpetual struggle with the evils in his own organism, or 
to “ till the ground from whence he was taken.” 

The diminution in his faculties for controlling not only his 
own nature, but the nature by which he was surrounded, is 
indicated in the words, “ Cursed be the ground for thy sake; 
in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life,” and the 
two following verses. 

The organic change which the human race underwent is 


240 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


indicated in the words, “Unto Adam also and to his wife* 
did J ehovah Elohim make coats of skins, and clothed them.”' 
This signifies that every atom of the human structure was 
now enclosed in another atom composed of elements drawn 
from the atoms of the lower animal creation, and that thus 
was formed a more solid material frame, still, however, far- 
more highly attenuated than the fleshly covering which we 
now wear. The enclosed atoms which remained intact, cor¬ 
respond more nearly to the material composing our psychic-, 
bodies or souls, or, in other words, the frames we carry with 
us when we undergo the process of change called death, and. 
pass into the invisible part of our universe. 

The relatively dense bodies of the Adamic race, are the coats 
of skins above mentioned, and the fact is alluded to more than 
once in the Kabbalah, as it was known to the ancient mys¬ 
tics, of whose knowledge this obscure record is largely a rep¬ 
ertory. So we read in the Sohar—“ When Adam dwelled in 
‘ the garden of Eden, he was dressed in a celestial garment,. 

‘ which is a garment of heavenly light; but when he was ex- 
‘ pelled from Eden, and became subject to the wants of this 
‘ world, what is written ? Jehovah Elohim made coats of 

* skins unto Adam and to his wife, and clothed them, for 
‘ prior to this they had garments of light—light of that light 
‘ which was used in the garden of Eden.” 1 

This transformation did not merely affect the whole nature 
of man, and prove the indirect cause of certain modifications 
in the earth’s crust, but it also had a most direct effect upon 
the fallen world. This is indicated in the words, “And Je- 
‘ liovah Elohim said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done 
‘ this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast 

* of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt 
‘ thou eat all the days of thy life : and I will put enmity be- 
‘ tween thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her 
‘ seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his 
‘ heel.” 

The atomic connection which had been established be¬ 
tween our universe and the fallen world by sex-intercourse, 
rendered this inevitable: no such change, as that involved 
by the solidification of the human organism, could take place: 

1 Sohar, ii. 2196. 


THE CHERUBIM. 


241 


without having a direct influence upon these nether regions 
which had now become inextricably interlocked with our 
own. The result has been incessant warfare. Warfare there, 
and warfare of another kind here. The warfare here is of 
another kind, because it is the effect of a conflict between 
divine and infernal atomic forces—in other words, between 
good and evil; while there it is the clash of angry passions, 
developed by the principle of lust,—the insane struggle with 
each other', of lunatics. 

The time is approaching when on our globe the conflict 
will enter upon a new phase, for the atomic conditions are 
undergoing change, the effect of which will be to increase our 
sensitiveness to influences from both worlds, and therefore to 
intensify, as it approaches its climax, the stupendous struggle 
of which our universe has been the theatre. The progress, 
and some of the results of that great struggle, are detailed 
at length in the inner meaning of the book of Eevelation, 
as well as in some of the prophetic writings of the Old Tes¬ 
tament. 

The cherubim with the “ flaming sword which turned 
every way, to keep the tree of life,” signify the divine dual 
principle through which alone man can win his way to 
immortal life; and the flaming sword signifies the penetrat¬ 
ing quality and heat of the force contained in this twofold 
principle, which has barred the way to man to a knowledge 
which should enable him to take in the immortal life-prin¬ 
ciple, which lies concealed behind it. But, as we learn else¬ 
where in Scripture, this flaming sword is not to bar the way 
for ever, for it will be grasped by the hand of the Messiah, 
and prove the sword of victory. 

Thus did man lose his original likeness to God. From this 
time, owing to the separation of the sexes into two solid 
halves, neither knowing which belonged to the other, man’s 
life on earth has been one of sorrow, disease, and sin, for 
each half is now the receptacle of an impure sex-force, instead 
of a pure one. So man procreates impure and diseased off¬ 
spring ; he violates the laws of nature, and gives vent to the 
passions of rapine and violence which infernal lust has 
generated in his organism. 


Q 


242 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


It is only by man’s own effort that he can win deliverance 
from this condition of things; and he will be supplied with the 
forces requisite for the combat, which will precede the vic¬ 
tory. It is because the days are at hand, when those who 
desire to be fighting on the right side will need all the 
spiritual weapons that can be forged in the white heat of 
the divine affections, and all the potency for action which 
those affections can impart, that I have felt myself impelled, 
by no force of natural inclination, to attempt to explain the 
origin and nature of the warfare upon which we are entering, 
and to reveal, so far as is permitted, the secret of the world’s 
malady. 


243 


CHAPTER XV. 

THE ORIGIN OF EVIL—MIXED CONDITIONS IN THE GENESIS OF EARTH— 
EVOLUTION OF THE FIRST FORMS OF LIFE, UNDER THE OPPOSING 
INFLUENCES OF SERAPHIM AND SIDDIM—THE GARDEN OF EDEN— 
MAN’S MISSION — METHOD OF ITS ACCOMPLISHMENT — THE EARTH- 
MALADY CAUSED BY THE POLLUTION OF ITS SEX-LIFE—ITS PURIFI¬ 
CATION POSSIBLE — NATURE OF THE STRUGGLE FOR PURITY THUS 
INVOLVED. 

Having in the previous chapter attempted to give, in as 
condensed a form as possible, the account of the cosmogony 
cf the world, contained in the first three chapters of Genesis, 
as read by the light of the inner meaning of the terms em¬ 
ployed, it may be well to recapitulate it as shortly as possible, 
in a form more adapted to the mind of the present day, and 
reconcile with it, so far as may be, the discoveries of modern 
science, without adopting necessarily the conclusions which 
have been arrived at as a consequence of those discoveries, 
and which are generally hypothetical; though it will be 
necessary, in continuing to follow the history of the human 
family, constantly to refer to the inner meaning of the Biblical 
narrative. 

In making this attempt I shall invoke, not merely the 
sacred record on the one hand, or scientific discovery on the 
other, but such aid as may be vouchsafed for the purpose. 

The method of operation of the divine love, wisdom, and 
proceeding, is hidden from the angels who inhabit the invis¬ 
ible region of our world; but it is known to them that a 
-universe was called into existence by the creative fiat, prior 
to our own; that, owing to the extraordinary faculties, with 
which the beings who peopled it were endowed, and the 
entire freedom of will which—as it is an essentially divine 


244 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


attribute — is inherent in every created being, certain of 
the beings' who inhabited this prior world, appropriated 
these faculties to themselves, not recognising the fact that 
while they felt themselves free, they did not belong to 
themselves, but to the Great Cause of their existence, whose 
freedom was in them, and therefore not their own, ex¬ 
cepting as they remained in Him. Hence arose a diver¬ 
gency in the will-principle, which induced a conflict with¬ 
in itself. And this engendered a sense of independence, 
which in its turn generated separation, isolation, pride, love 
of dominion, and introduced a disorder, which finally ended 
in a disruption between the antagonistic will-principles, and 
which penetrated to the very foundations of the universal 
structure, culminating at last in two regions of the same 
world, dominated by opposing principles,—the ruling senti¬ 
ment in the one being love of God and the neighbour, and 
in the other, love of self to the exclusion of the neighbour; 
these two remaining nevertheless in atomic affinity, and being 
united by an intermediate region. 

As the reproduction of life in new forms is a universal law 
of nature, there evolved from the wreckage which resulted 
from the catastrophe above alluded to, a new substance or 
world-seed, the atomic elements of which contained principles 
inherent in the material of the opposing sections of the uni¬ 
verse which had given it birth. 

The fertilisation of the world-seed of our universe, under 
the rival operation of the Seraphim and Siddim, took place, 
therefore, under conditions in the highest degree disorderly 
and antagonistic. And as the Siddim could act more 
powerfully upon the lower forms of nature, for reasons which 
will presently be explained, than their unfallen opponents, 
there resulted a chaotic and relatively disorderly evolutionary 
process, which, although it took place under the laws which 
controlled it, exhibited—in the features of disturbance which 
characterise the solidification of the earth’s crust, in its prim¬ 
itive atmospheric conditions, and in the debased forms of 
early animal life, which alone could exist in them until they 
underwent modification—all the evidences of an almost over¬ 
powering infusion of that corrupt atomic force which we 
call evil. 


EVOLUTION UNDER OPPOSING FORCES. 


245 


The result was the generation of many forms of vegetable 
and animal life which are now extinct, and which were more 
in affinity with the lower than the upper world. As these 
evolved, the infernal force increased its hold on nature, because 
the action of the Seraphim is from above through the highest 
form of living being, which is man, who had not yet come 
into existence; while that of the Siddim is from below, 
through the lowest forms of nature. The tendency of the 
Siddistic force is to disintegrate; that of the Seraphistic 
is to unite. The former endeavoured, therefore, to introduce 
into nature the principle of unisexuality, they having lost all 
consciousness of their own bisexuality; while the Seraphim 
opposed their effort with the force of bisexuality, which, being 
derived from the source of all nature, was impregnable to 
their attacks in its centre, though open to them on its cir¬ 
cumference. 

Species developed under these complex and disorderly 
conditions; hence we find in vegetable nature so many plants 
bisexual, side by side with others which are male and female, 
while in many of the lower forms of animal life, beginning 
with the amoeba itself, from which we are supposed by evolu¬ 
tionists to have sprung, the bisexual principle is retained, 
though concealed from the scientific eye, and each specimen is 
furnished with the reproductive powers necessary for its own 
propagation by fission. As larger forms evolved, the division 
of the sexes became manifest, and the action of the Siddim 
became more apparent in the hideousness of the monsters, 
of which we find the remains so far back as the palaeozoic 
period. Nor is it unlikely, although we have no direct 
evidence of it, that at that period transmutation of species 
may have taken place. 1 * * 4 The aspect of nature prior to the 

1 A tradition of the confusion which now reigned is evidently contained in 
the cosmogony of Eridu, professed to have been inscribed by the god of Eridu 
himself, and which was long anterior to the Mosaic cosmogony : “ There was a 

‘ time in which there existed nothing but darkness and an abyss of waters, 
■* wherein resided the most hideous things, which were produced by a twofold 

‘ principle. There appeared men, some of whom were furnished with two 
* wings, others with four, and with two faces. They had one body, but two 

4 heads—the one that of a man, the other that of a woman. They were like- 
‘ wise, in their several organs, both male and female.” Here is a distorted allu- 
eion to the biune composition of the first human pairs as they originally 


246 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


appearance of man in it has been graphically portrayed for 
us by science, and there is no reason to think that the picture 
is in any important respect inaccurate; but it is impossible 
to conceive of anything more weird, desolate, and forbidding 
than this world was under the influences which were now 
controlling, its evolution. It was when it had reached its- 
extreme stage of disorderly development, that man appeared 
upon the scene, in a region more highly favoured than any 
which has been pictured by the pen of science. It was one 
upon which the Seraphim had concentrated the divine energies 
for this purpose, and was upon a continent which has since 
been submerged. Here both fauna and flora were of a fairer 
type than in other parts of the world, the seasons less in- 
clement, and the conditions of existence in every way more 
favourable. 

The great contrast which existed between the primitive 
condition of man, and that of the nature by which he was 
surrounded, arose from this fact, that the formative or evo¬ 
lutionary action of the Siddim was diffused, that of the 
Seraphim was concentric. The one set of influences acted on 
the circumference, their life-emanations germinating in the 
very lowest forms of nature, and on its most external ex¬ 
panses,—the other set, focussing as through a burning-glass 
the rays of the divine vitality on the anima mundi, or world- 
soul, and thus developing life from the centre outward, from 
whence it radiated to all parts of those outer expanses in 
which the Siddim were so busily employed, infusing a 
divine element into their field of labour, and preparing it for 
the special vitalising force which man was destined to bring 


emanated from the Seraphim, mixed up with that Siddistic invasion to which 
we owe the monsters of the period prior to the appearance of man upon 
earth, and which are thus described : “ Other human figures were to be seen 
‘ with the legs and horns of a goat; some had horses’ feet, while others united 

* the hindquarters of a horse with the body of a man, resembling in shape the 

* hippocentaurs. Bulls likewise were bred with the heads of men, and dogs 

* with fourfold bodies terminated in their extremities with the tails of fishes. 
‘ In short, there were creatures in which were combined the limbs of every 
‘ species of animal. In addition to these there were fishes, reptiles, serpents, 
‘ with other monstrous animals, which assumed each other’s shape and coun- 
‘ tenance—of all which were preserved delineations in the Temple of Belos in 
’ Babylon.”—Hibbert Lectures, 1887, p. 369. 


i 


SIDDISTIC INVASION. 247 

to bear upon it through the principle of bisexuality. For 
this purpose a concentration of divine force was directed 
upon that locality on the earth’s surface symbolised by the 
garden of Eden, which was in fact the point of external 
magnetic contact with the upper world, and hence the myth 
which has loeated it in the vicinity of the Pamir plateau, in 
the Hindoo Koosh, which is sometimes called “ the roof of 
the world,” and sometimes its navel; for it may be said that 
the umbilical cord which connected this world with the one 
which was unfallen, was attached by the atomic chain of the 
Seraphim, who, in spite of the more finely attenuated sub¬ 
stance of which they were composed, were able to visit it, 
and to a certain extent make it their abode. They were, in 
fact, the progenitors of the human race; giving birth to our 
first parents, not by any process of propagation known to men 
in these days, but by what I have already called generative 
exhalation. 

The near relation which the Siddim bore to primitive 
man is indicated in the sixth chapter of Genesis, where it is 
said that “the sons of God saw the daughters of men that 
they were fair; and they took them wives of all that they 
chose.” This, however, was after man had succumbed as to 
his feminine principle, to infernal invasion. The consequences 
of this sex-contact on the part of the Siddim I shall allude 
to presently. They were called sons of God, although 
Siddim, because originally made in His likeness. Although, 
as I have explained, the generation of man took place through 
the Seraphim, in a region specially prepared for him, and he 
was surrounded by a nature in strong contrast to the rest of 
the world, the greater part of which was so miasmatic and 
pervaded by infernal poisons, that it would have been un¬ 
inhabitable by him, his position was in the highest degree 
critical. Even though he had been preserved free from 
taint, the exquisite nature by which he was environed was 
not; for even though surrounded by sea, the continent 
figured under the name of the garden of Eden, had its roots 
in the poisoned earth-crust, and its atomic particles were 
pervaded by the virus, though to a far less extent than else¬ 
where, which infected the whole creation. 

The persistent attacks which the Siddim brought to bear 


248 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


upon this portion of the earth’s surface ultimately caused its 
submersion. Still man was provided with protection from 
the dangers arising from this source, which are symbolised in 
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In other words, 
he was intuitively conscious of the laws which ensured his 
safety, and of the consequences of disobedience. Moreover, 
he was in constant relations with the angelic visitors to 
whom he owed his origin, and of whose frequent visitations 
he was externally cognisant. This is indicated by the internal 
meaning of the words, “And they heard the voice of Jehovah 
Elohim walking in the garden in the cool of the day,” and in 
the narrative of the conversation which followed, which they 
recognised as a divine inspiration through the Seraphim. 

The substance of the Adamic man, although grosser than 
that of his angelic progenitors, was far more attenuated than 
that of the nature by which he was surrounded, which was 
permeable to it; he was, in fact, more nearly allied to that 
of a being who has passed away from this world, than to one 
now on it, or, to use a term now in common use, he was 
fourth dimensional. His partial supremacy over nature was 
due to this fact; and it was by virtue of the potency with 
which he was thus endowed, that he was intrusted with the 
lofty mission of purifying the earth, or rather of preserving 
his own bisexual purity, in order that through it the ardours 
of the divine energy might descend, and thus restore this 
universe to the primal condition of our parent world, and 
reconquer and redeem the region of it that had fallen. 

In a word, the whole story resolves itself into this:— 

Worlds generate worlds. In our case the world that 
brought us forth involved itself in a catastrophe, consequent 
upon the violation of a law controlling the operation of the 
will, by which its freedom is lost so soon as it ceases to be a 
divine freedom, and becomes a personally appropriated free¬ 
dom. It was not possible for God to endow man with His 
own will, which is free, and at the same time so to limit it 
that its recipient should be deprived of the sense of individual 
freedom, which would naturally • take the form of personal 
independence, were it not held in check by the constant recol¬ 
lection of its origin. The indulgence of this sentiment of 
independence is the first step to a separation from God, which, 


FREE-WILL. 


249 


in the case of such stupendously endowed beings as those who 
inhabited the world prior to our own, would at first uncon¬ 
sciously develop into pride, and so gradually into a more or 
less conscious antagonism. This is the origin, so far as our 
universe is concerned, of what is called “ evil.” As the off¬ 
spring of that world we inherit its taint, and, indeed, are 
impregnated with it to such an extent that few among us 
have yet learnt that we have no freedom of will of our own, 
apart from the divine will which should be freely operating 
through us. 

It is by the recovery by man of God’s freedom of will, 
that he can recover his own; and this can only be done by 
regaining the condition he has lost, with all the potencies in¬ 
herent to it. He then becomes the instrument, not merely of 
the redemption of his own world, but of the one that gave it 
•birth. To these contending streams of energy,—one from 
below, tainted with the poison of evil; one from above, con¬ 
taining within it concealed potencies of unknown capacity 
for good,—is due the complex character of the universe in 
which we dwell; with its death-dealing and health-giving 
properties of plants and minerals; its noxious and revolting 
insects, and those that charm the eye with their beauty of 
form and colour; its animals that war upon man, and those 
that serve him ; and lastly, man himself, aspiring or debased, 
gentle or ferocious, as the case may be. 

This nature it is now man’s function and mission to purify 
and redeem; and to this end he must understand, first, the 
secret of its malady, secondly, the causes that produced it, 
and lastly, the remedy which it is in his power to apply. 
He must no longer allow his prejudices, derived from the 
very finite and imperfect observation of his senses, to close 
his eyes to the fact that we are in direct rapport with two 
opposite classes of invisible beings v , and that upon the re¬ 
lation which we occupy towards them everything depends. 
This is a truth that Christians ought to have no difficulty in 
accepting, for it is taught in almost every page in the Bible. 
He must also realise that these two classes consist, on the one 
hand, of those who have lived upon this earth, and who have, 
by the exercise of will in the right direction, placed them¬ 
selves in close atomic union with the inhabitants of that 


250 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


superior region which preserved its first estate, and who 
are in relation with the Elohim, and so with the infinite 
Jehovah Elohim; and on the other hand, of those who have,, 
by the exercise of the will in the wrong direction, placed' 
themselves in atomic union with the inhabitants of that, 
lower region which lost its first estate, and who use every 
effort to oppose the vital life-current that descends through 
the first-mentioned class of beings, by a counter-current, 
which, meeting in man, produces the incessant conflict of 
which he is the victim, and which is known as the struggle- 
between good and evil. This assertion is not one which is 
susceptible of mathematical proof, but it is one which it is 
open to every man to verify by his own personal experi¬ 
ence by a moral process, the nature of which will always 
he made clear to every man who honestly sets to work to 
discover it. 

In the course of his effort to verify the existence of these 
rival influences, which will bring him into violent and painful 
internal conflict, he will become conscious of the truth of the 
next statement, which is, that the root of the moral disease in 
himself, and which is also the seat of the malady in nature, is 
the poison which has polluted the vital or generative principle 
in his organism. The most powerful current in nature is the 
life-current—that which propagates and sustains; for it is- 
by the force inherent in it that worlds generate worlds. If 
this is impure, vitality is poisoned at its fountain-head; but 
inasmuch as this force, like every other force, is atomic, and 
depends for its impurity upon its present atomic combinations, 
it is evident that the introduction of new force of the same- 
essential quality, but with different properties, would involve- 
chemical changes and a recombination of elements, by means- 
of which those which are now impure might be relieved of 
their taint, and the character of the whole vitalising cur¬ 
rent altered. The man engaged in the moral experiment, 
of discovering in his own person what this force is, and how 
it may be applied for the “ restitution of all things/’ without 
taking thought for himself in the matter, will soon discover 
that while it is of sex-quality, it is of a different sex-quality 
from any of which he has hitherto had any knowledge; and 
he will find himself entering upon a region of investigation 


THE STRUGGLE FOR PURITY. 


251 


from which he would gladly turn aside, for it will expose him 
to attack, misconstruction, and persecution from many quar¬ 
ters. It is also one in which snares, pitfalls, and dangers of 
every description abound; and it would be better far never to- 
enter upon it, than to do so unimpressed with the fearful 
responsibilities it involves, with the solemn issues which are 
at stake, and with the utter unworthiness of any human 
creature to tread-upon such holy ground, until he has prepared 
himself, by long and arduous combats for purity, and has- 
placed himself in such relations with his protecting and 
assisting angels, as will assure him against overwhelming; 
attacks by the internals. 

Having thus fortified himself both from within and from 
without, and having steeled himself against charges of impur¬ 
ity on the part of those he is giving his life to purify, he may 
venture, tentatively and cautiously, upon this dangerous 
ground ; but he will immediately become aware that it is not 
safe to do so alone, and that he must be upheld, guided, and 
assisted by those who have trodden it before him, and who- 
have learnt to discriminate between the divine bisexual force, 
and the unisexual simulation of it projected from the lower 
world. 

Those who, from fear of a public opinion impregnated with 
impurity, shrink from grappling with the disease inherent in 
the generative and reproductive principle of the universe,, 
after they have become convinced that the only hope of the 
world’s redemption lies in its purification, will reap the reward 
of their timidity when they pass into another life, and find 
the problem of their own purification presented to them under 
conditions much more trying than those which surround it 
here. But those who are willing, inspired by love for human¬ 
ity, to place themselves in God’s hands as ready sacrifices for 
the advancement of this great work, will find a consolation in 
the supreme peace and joy which will flood them, that will 
more than compensate for the rage that will be concentrated 
upon them by the infernals, and which will find expression 
through their agents in this world, generally among those 
most noted for what is called their “ piety” and “good works.”* 
As, in the days of Christ, so it will be again; the most bitter 
enemies of him who tries to bring new life and love into the 


252 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


world from the source of life and love, will be the Churches, 
-and the Pharisees by whom they are haunted. 

The problem of the origin of evil has long been the one 
which has vexed the soul of humanity: we now see that evil 
may be extirpated from its origin, which is no lower than the 
fallen part of a universe which has assisted in the develop¬ 
ment and evolution of our own, in which will, asserting that 
it possessed a personal freedom inherent in itself, indepen¬ 
dently of the divine freedom, separated itself from God, and 
thus from the quality of love which is in God. For in the 
degree in which man feels that his will is God’s will operating 
in him, does he feel that his love is God’s love operating in 
him, and the natuye of that love is all-embracing, and its 
quality is out-giving. But the man who feels that his will is 
his own, feels also that his love is his own, and the nature of 
that love is exacting, and its quality in-taking. Therefore it 
is evident that in the degree in which man feels that he has 
no other will but God’s, does the potency of that will increase; 
and in the degree that the divine love flows into him by the 
channel of that will, does it flow out of him upon the nature 
and the humanity which is so dear to God ; and he will recog¬ 
nise in its ardours an uncontrollable desire to serve his fel¬ 
lows, and can discriminate it thereby from that false love, 
which, having its root in the principle of personal human 
will, is essentially parasitical, and sustains itself by the life 
which it drains from others, thus perverting the principle of 
divine love, and transforming it into infernal lust. 

The evolutionary period is now commencing when, if we 
look in vain for help from theology, we may at least hope for 
sympathy from science; for even it will admit that if electric 
and other forces contain, as has been suggested by science 
itself, “ files of particles,” the most powerful force in nature, 
which is the sex-force, must also be atomic. And indeed, con¬ 
sidering its natural results in the shape of offspring, this is an 
-almost self-evident proposition ; for it cannot be doubted that 
the character of the offspring is determined by the quality of 
the masculine and feminine atoms which combine to form it, 
•and it is the knowledge of this fact which governs the breed¬ 
ing of stock, accounts for the phenomena of heredity, and 
•explains the varieties of species, both in vegetable and animal 


THE NEW VITAL CURRENT. 


25a 


nature. If, then, a new atomic force can be introduced into 
man’s organism, of a higher and purer quality than any of 
which we have any cognisance, it is evident that a new door of 
evolution is open to him. He will survive, not because he is 
able to destroy more of his fellow-creatures in a given time 
by means of a curiously invented gun than other men; not 
because he is the pioneer of a civilisation so deadly in its 
character, that the Red Indian or Australian perishes before 
it as before a pestilence; not because he has greater facilities 
than his fellows for starving others that he may enrich him¬ 
self ; not for these, and many other kindred reasons, will he 
survive; but because he will find himself endowed with the 
vigours derived from a new and pure sex-potency, which 
will enable him ultimately to produce offspring of a loftier 
physical and moral type, possessing those finer faculties 
of a supersensuous kind, which were lost when the Adamic 
race closed all the subsurface region of its consciousness, 
and stupefied alike its moral instinct and its rational intelli¬ 
gence, by absorbing a current of lust from the lower animal 
creation. 

To those who have had the patience to follow me thus far, 
the question will now naturally suggest itself, By what pro¬ 
cess can the pure bisexual force be introduced into the 
organism ? and what channel of descent has been provided 
for it ? Before reaching this point it will be necessary briefly 
to revert to the history of the race from the period of the 
commencement of the new conditions under which it was 
destined to exist. The internal meaning of the Book of 
Genesis records the story with much elaborateness of detail, 
as handed down by tradition on which was grafted the in¬ 
spiration of the writer; but it is foreign to the purpose of 
this book to do more than notice the points which have a 
practical bearing upon the special subject we are discussing. 

It has been said that the process of atomic accretion, which 
resulted in the materialisation of the particles in their present 
form, was a slow and gradual one, and during its progress the 
struggle between the Siddim and the Seraphim over the 
sex-principle in man—the one still further to debase it, the 
other to preserve it—was fierce and incessant. It resulted in 
the division of the Adamic race into two opposing forces, 


254 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


represented by Cain and Abel, the one dominated by the 
•Siddim, the other under the influence of the Seraphim. 
Up to this time physiological birth was unknown, the 
human race being, by means of the respiratory organs, pro¬ 
pagated in pairs, the male with the female, who formed the 
•complete being, though it was divided materially as to the 
surface substance. 

The tradition of this exists in the Talmud, where it is said 
that both Cain and Abel were born with twin sisters ; 1 and 
it has been handed down to us from the most ancient times 
as one of the signs of the zodiac, though mystics apply it 
also to the progress of the soul. 

The individuals of the Adamic race were also, owing to 
their atomic composition, endowed with vitality which pro¬ 
tracted existence over long periods of duration; the tradition 
•of this accounts for the longevity ascribed to the patriarchs. 
The idea of procreation by respiration will of course seem 
fantastic to the natural mind, until it reflects upon the fact 
that we actually do procreate by respiration every day of our 
lives. This is only brought forcibly to our notice in cases of 
infectious maladies, for nothing is more certain than that the 
exhalations of diseased persons are charged with microbes or 
bacilli, or minute living organisms which carry with them 
the germs of death, which are, so to speak, hatched in our 
bodies, and which we breathe out into nature, thus becoming 
their human parents. There would therefore be nothing 
strange in the phenomenon of similarly generated organisms 
being life-giving, instead of death-dealing: such do in fact 
exist in the sentient atoms of healing magnetism, the quality 
of which largely depends on the respiratory processes of the 
operator. In proportion as the breath is long and deep, is 
the magnetic current powerful and effective. I am able to 
state this from personal experience. As the inhalation of 
infinitesimal living organisms, which generate in the lungs, 
produce consumption, and as the exhalation of them propels 
their life into other human organisms, so the human soul- 
germs were propelled from the creative source into the 
respiratory organs of those beings of a former world, where 

1 Sanhedrim, fol. 38, col. 2. 


THE NEW VITAL CURRENT. 


255 


they generated, and from which they issued in a bisexual 
aromal form, filled with the breath of life, and acquired, by 
atomic condensation and combination, the structural condi¬ 
tions necessary to their growth and development. It was 
thus man was first generated through the Seraphim; it was 
thus, though under somewhat different conditions, that he 
was procreated throughout the early stage of his existence 
on earth—and this is the mystery of the origin of man. 


256 


CHAPTER XYI. 


THE FIRST PERIOD OF THE RACE—ESOTERIC SENSE OF THE CONFLICT 
BETWEEN CAIN AND ABEL—THE MARK OF CAIN—THE INTRODUCTION 
OF PHYSIOLOGICAL BIRTH—OF POLYGAMY—THE FATE OF THE LAMECH 
RACES—INVASION OF THE PLANET BY THE SIDDIM—THEIR MIXED* 
PROGENY—THE BOOK OF ENOCH—THE DELUGE — EARLIEST COSMO¬ 
GONIC TRADITIONS—THE GOLDEN AGE. 

In order to trace the early history of man to historic times,, 
it is necessary that I should enter upon a somewhat detailed 
examination of the esoteric sense, contained in the Biblical 
narrative up to the period immediately succeeding the deluge. 

Geologists admit the existence of a miocene continent which 
has been submerged, and which has received the name of 
Atlantis. From the evidences which have been obtained as 
to the conditions of nature upon it, there is nothing impos¬ 
sible in supposing it to have been the scene of the catas¬ 
trophe called the Fall, and of the subsequent experiences of 
the Adamic race. 

Eastern occultists of the modern school throw back the 
first appearance of man upon earth to a period far anterior 
to this: though they insist strongly on his androgynous com¬ 
position, they hold that the separation of the sexes took 
place with the third root-race—the Lemurians of the second¬ 
ary geological epoch. Physiological birth was, according to- 
them, unknown to the second race, who were androgynous, 
and will close before the sixth race. 

Without entering upon this theory, it is interesting, as- 
pointing to a common origin in tradition, and a certain simi¬ 
larity in detail; for the change in the method of reproduc¬ 
tion is symbolised in the story of Cain and Abel. 


CAIN AND ABEL. 


257 


As the processes of nature are gradual, the events which 
preceded this episode—namely, the expulsion from the garden 
of Eden, which consisted in a modification of the earth’s 
crust; and the clothing with skins, which consisted in a 
slow atomic change in the organism of man—were extended 
over a protracted period, as measured by our standard ; dur¬ 
ing which time a constant separation was being effected 
between the masculine and feminine principles, until it 
reached the point signified in the fourth chapter of Genesis, 
by the birth of Cain and Abel. Cain, as his Hebrew name 
implies, signifying the male principle—therefore when Cain 
was born, Eve said, I have gotten a man of the Lord; and 
Abel, as his name implies, signifying the breath (pneuma) or 
female principle . 1 “ And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but 
Cain was a tiller of the ground,” signifies the difference 
between the interior functions of the feminine principle and 
the exterior functions of the masculine. “ And Cain brought 
of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord,” signi¬ 
fies the desire of the masculine to approach God directly, and 
not through the feminine, which is the divine order, and 
thus to dominate the feminine. Abel’s sacrifice signifies 
adoration by the human feminine. “And God had respect 
unto Abel and his offering,” signifies the union of the divine 
masculine with the human feminine; “ but unto Cain and to 
his offering he had not respect,” signifies the divine repudi¬ 
ation of the disorderly attempt of the human masculine to 
unite itself with God, otherwise than through the feminine. 
“ And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell,” signi¬ 
fies the revolt of the male principle. “ And the Lord said unto 
‘ Cain, Why art thou wroth ? and why is thy countenance 
4 fallen ? If thou doest well, shalt thou not have the excel- 
‘ lency ? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door, and 
‘ he shall be subject unto thee, and thou shalt rule over him,” 
signifies that God does not interfere with the freedom of 
man’s will, but allows him to take the consequences of his 
own acts. Therefore in this case the human masculine prin¬ 
ciple violated the divine order, and asserted its supremacy 
over the feminine, thus pointing to the fulfilment of the 

1 The marginal translations of both names are not quite correctly given iu 
the Bible. 


It 


258 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


condemnation of Eve, to whom it was said in the sixteenth 
verse of the previous chapter, “ and thou shalt be subject 
to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” In other 
words, the feminine principle had, by this act of fatal dis¬ 
obedience, incurred subjection to the masculine. 

The conflict between Cain and Abel signifies the struggle 
between the two principles, and the murder of Abel or the 
“breath,” signifies the conquest of the female by the male 
principle, and the extinction of the respiratory generative 
process which had hitherto prevailed. Cain’s exclamation in 
answer to the demand of God after the feminine, “ Am I my 
brother’s keeper ? ” signifies his repudiation of the relation 
of guardianship, which, in the divine order, the masculine 
principle bore to the feminine. “ The voice of thy brother’s 
blood crieth unto me from the ground,” signifies the com¬ 
plaint of the feminine upon being thus animalised by the 
masculine. 

“ Now thou art cursed from the earth, which hath opened 
her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand,” 
signifies the degradation which would ensue to man through 
an atomic change of particles of a still grosser material char¬ 
acter, by which his organism and its functions would become 
nearly allied to those of the lower animal creation. “ When 
thou tillest the ground, it shall not yield thee her strength,” 
signifies that it would be impossible for man to draw from 
the principle whiqh he had thus debased the divine nourish¬ 
ment, as he had hitherto done. “ A fugitive and a vagabond 
shalt thou be in the earth,” signifies that by this act man had 
separated himself from internal union with God. Cain’s ex¬ 
clamation, “ Behold, Thou hast driven me out this day from 
the face of the earth; and from Thy face shall I be hid; 
and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond upon the earth,” 
signifies the despair of the race at finding the change which 
had supervened in consequence- of the extinction of the 
external manifestation of the Divine Feminine principle, 
and of the method of procreation thereby previously existing ; 
thus involving man in a period of spiritual desolation, and 
of rapid decay as to his natural life, and, as he supposed, of 
cessation from race reproduction. “ And the Lord said, There¬ 
fore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on 


THE MARK OF CAIN. 


259 


him sevenfold,” signifies that the sex-principle would be pre¬ 
served notwithstanding that it had been thus debased, and could 
only be further prostituted on the penalty of a still heavier 
punishment than that which had befallen the race already. 

“And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding 
him should kill him,” signifies that a method of procreation 
had been provided, suitable to the new organic conditions 
which had now been introduced, allied to the lower animal 
creation; and that the physical organism of man underwent 
the change as to the formation of his body, which thus con¬ 
stituted the outward mark of his animal degradation. 

This change could only be effected under the conditions 
which the introduction of the Siddistic virus into the human 
system imposed. It was a slow and gradual process of dev¬ 
olution from the more plastic or fluid man, downward to 
the gross and solid brute creation, and involved a structural 
change in his organism almost as complete as if he had 
evolved upwards from the amoeba. It involved a correspond¬ 
ing mental and moral degradation, and extended over an 
immense period of time, during which the forces of the 
Siddim were incessantly active, until, at last, man was almost 
reduced to the condition of a monkey. Being, however, ori¬ 
ginally atomically constituted as to his moral and reasoning 
faculties on a fundamentally different basis, it was not pos¬ 
sible for the moral and intellectual chasm which separates 
him from the brute creation to be bridged over. During all 
this time the process of procreation underwent a gradual 
change, developing new conditions which entirely altered its 
character, until it became enshrouded in the secrecy and the 
shame which the mark of Cain bears with it to this day . 1 

The physiological change culminated at the race of Seth, 

1 “ St Augustine makes Abel the type of the new regenerate man ; Cain that 
■of the natural man.”—(De Civ. Dei, xv. 1.) 

“The oriental Gnosticism of the Sabseans made Abel an incarnate aeon, and 

* the Gnostic or Manichaean sect of the Abelitae in North Africa, at the time of 

* Augustine (De Haer., 86, 87), so called themselves from a tradition that Abel, 

* though married, lived in continence. In order to avoid perpetuating original 

* sin, they followed his example ; but in order to keep up their sect) each mar- 

* ried pair adopted a male and female child, who in their turn vowed to marry 

* under the same conditions.” See Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible. The 
above tradition evidently had relation to the change in the sex-relation con¬ 
cealed in the allegory of Cain and Abel. 


260 


SCIENTIFIC KELIGION. 


as we read in the 25th verse of the same chapter, “ And 
‘ Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and she 
‘ called his name Seth: For God, she said, has appointed me 
* seed otherwise, 1 instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.” These 
words signify the completion of the change, and the name 
Seth implies the nature of the change, which may easily be 
deduced from the Hebrew. 

The birth of Seth marks a new departure for the race > 
which is indicated in the first verses of the next chapter, in 
which we are told that Adam “ begat a son in his own like¬ 
ness,” in contradistinction to the immediately preceding verse 
where it is said, “ In the day that God created man, in the 
likeness of God made He him; male and female created He 
them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam.” It is 
scarcely possible to have a statement emphasising and recapit¬ 
ulating more strongly the bisexual nature of the first created 
man than this. For, though it refers to the first Adam, or 
Adam Cadmon, it is expressly repeated to give point to the 
great change which had taken place in humanitary conditions, 
and which resulted in a man being no longer born in the 
divine likeness as two-in-one, but in that of his father alone. 
Hence the son of Seth was called “ Enos,” a word signifying 
“ a man of sorrow.” 

“ Then men began to call upon the name of the Lord,” 
signifies the effort man made to unite himself with God in 
his new condition. 

We are given the pedigree of Lamech, the seventh from 
Adam, up to Cain, and also of another race Lamech, the ninth 
from Adam, up to Seth, in order to mark the two opposing 
moral currents, which had resulted from the new organic con¬ 
ditions that now controlled the human race. 

It should always be borne in mind that these names in 
their deepest signification indicate principles, and in their 
more external sense mean races. In the descendants of Cain 
we trace the lower or material development of man, in that 
of Seth the higher or spiritual one. Thus, in one case, we 
have Enoch, the father of Irad, and the third from Adam, 
establishing the selfish lust-principle as a vital energy in the 
organism; which is represented by Cain, or the masculine 

1 The Biblical translation is incorrect. 


INTRODUCTION OF POLYGAMY. 


261 


principle, founding a city in his name; and in the other we 
have Enoch, the son of Jared, and the seventh from Adam, 
representing the absolutely pure divine love-principle; for we 
are told that he “ walked with God: and he was not; for God 
took him,” which signifies that at this period of the race, a 
certain specific manifestation of the pure love-principle which 
had lasted up to this time became temporarily extinguished; 
but only temporarily, for this principle is one of the two 
witnesses mentioned in the eleventh chapter of the Revelation, 
in which, “ after three days and a half the Spirit of life from 
God shall enter,” and these three days and a half are even 
now terminating. The second witness is Elijah, who repre¬ 
sents another principle ; as it is written, “ Behold, I will send 
4 you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and 

* dreadful day of the Lord : and he shall turn the heart of the 

* fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their 
< fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” The 
precise signification of the two witnesses will be explained 
later. 

We have further, in the descendants of Cain, the vices in¬ 
dicated which characterised the material progress of the race, 
and in their most external sense that progress itself. Thus 
the names of the three women mentioned mean respectively, 
“ adornment,” “ music,” and “ beauty ”; while the occupa¬ 
tions which are given of the three sons of two of them, indi¬ 
cate the state of civilisation at which the world had arrived. 
All these names have, however, other inner meanings. 

The names of the descendants of Seth indicate the moral 
condition of the race, and such virtues as it still retained. 

Up to this time, although the process of procreation, which 
characterises the lower animal creation, had been introduced 
by the catastrophe represented in the legend of Cain and 
Abel, the external marriage-tie which had resulted therefrom 
had been strictly monogamic, and an essential principle of 
the Divine Eeminine had thus been retained. 

It was reserved for the race, signified under the name 
Lamech, seventh from Adam, to destroy this last vestige of 
purity by the introduction of polygamy. “ And Lamech said 
unto his wives, Adah and Zillah, hear my voice ; ye wives of 
Lamech, hearken unto my speech: for I have slain a man to 


262 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


my wounding, and a young man to my hurt.” The presence 
of the two wives, and the fact that the speech is addressed 
specially to them, imparts a peculiar significance to the con¬ 
fession of Lamech. The man slain to his wounding, and the 
young man to his hurt, signifies the monogamic principle, as 
represented by Cain, who was thus in his turn slain. 1 “ There¬ 
fore,” he continued, “if Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly 
Lamech seventy and sevenfold.” In other words, so little 
of the divine purity was now left, that if the destruction of 
what Cain preserved deserved a sevenfold vengeance, the 
extinction of the slight semblance of it still retained by 
Lamech, deserved one much heavier. 

The reason why the crime of Lamech exceeded, if possible, 
that of Cain, was because, so long as the monogamic principle 
lasted, it represented, however feebly, the original dual con¬ 
stitution of man, a principle embodied in the “ Word” or the 
creative “Two-in-One,” proceeding from the infinite Father 
and Mother, incarnated at last on earth as Christ. This is 
remarkably illustrated by the records which have reached us 
of the most ancient Accadian religion of Eridu, as elucidated 
by Professor Sayce, from which the allegories contained in 
the Pentateuch are derived. Tammuz, as we know, was the 
sun-god, or “Word,” proceeding from the two-in-one, Ea and 
Dav-kina, the sources of life, and represented in Genesis, 
according to Professor Sayce, “ by the two varying forms of 
Methuselah and Methusael,” which in Assyrian should be 
Mutu-sa-ilati, “ the husband of the goddess ”— i.e., Tammuz, 
the husband of Istar, who was his feminine complement. 
We learn from the same authority that Lamech would be the 
Semitic equivalent of Lamga, a name of the moon-god; that 
“ Adah and Zillah, his wives, would correspond ” with Edu 
and Isillu, “darkness” and “shade”; that “ Jabal and Jubal 
‘ are merely variant forms of the same word, which is evi- 
‘ dently the Assyrian Ablu, ‘son,’ from Abalu, to ‘bring down/ 
* hence Abel. Ablu refers us to the only son Tammuz, who 
‘ was a shepherd like Jabal and Abel, whose untimely death 
‘ was commemorated by the musical instruments of Jubal,” 
and that “ there are some who would aver that the Tubal- 
‘ cain of Genesis is but the double of Cain, and that it was 

1 According to the Talmud, Cain was slain by Lamech. 


MONOGAMY RESTORED BY CHRIST. 


263 


* he, and not his father Lamech, who had slain the young 
‘man” (Yeled, Assyrian, ilattu, a title of Tainnuizl The 
patriarchs of the Pentateuch thus became deities in the more 
ancient religion, but there runs through all its mythology the 
thread of the same idea, that a great sacrilege had been com¬ 
mitted in regard to the sex-principle, which was typified by 
Tammuz and Istar, by Venus and Adonis, Isis and Osiris, 
Baal and Beltis, and elsewhere; but the Accadian mythology 
is especially interesting, because the Abel slain by Cain, and 
the young man slain by Lamga, the moon-god, are in both 
instances Tammuz, the sun-god, or Word. With regard to 
Enoch, Professor Sayce says: “If I am right in identifying 
‘ Unuk with the Enoch of Genesis, the city built by Kain in 
‘ commemoration of his first-born son, Unuk must be regarded 
‘ as having received its earliest culture from Eridu, since 

* Enoch was the son of Jared, according to Genesis v. 18, and 
‘ Jared or Irad (Genesis iv. 18) is the same word as Eridu.” 1 

It was part of the great mission of Christ, by His life and 
death, in preparation for a much greater event which was 
to follow, to restore the monogamic principle; and it was 
reserved for Mohammed and Joseph Smith to receive in¬ 
spirations from the lower regions of our universe, which 
proclaimed as a divine revelation, the essentially infernal 
principle of polygamy. 

Christ’s reply to the Pharisees, that in heaven there was 
neither marrying nor giving in marriage, had reference to 
the condition of the race before the introduction of marriage, 
that followed on the procreative method resulting from the 
suppression of generative exhalation, and which implied that 
bisexual union, where male and female principles form one 
indissoluble being. 

We hear nothing more of the polygamous races, whose 
lapse is thus recorded; nor of their extinction as separate 
nationalities, which is figured under the death of each 
patriarch, because they spread over the face of the habitable 
globe, and became literally fugitives and wanderers, soon 
losing the last traces of any civilisation they may have 
possessed, and sinking to the lowest depths which it is 
possible for humanity to attain. We have traces of them to 
1 Hibbert Lectures, 1887, pp. 185, 186. 


264 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


this day in the remains of palaeolithic man—in the rude im¬ 
plements and debased physical conditions which characterise 
the earliest specimens that have been found of the human 
race. 

It was otherwise with the race Lamech, the ninth from 
Adhm. Their organic conditions still admitted of a close 
external contact being maintained between the beings in the 
fallen and unfallen regions of the world which had preceded. 
Hence we read in the Biblical narrative “that the sons of 
God saw the daughters of men that they were fair.” The 
sons of God here mentioned were the Siddim or fallen angels 
of the previous world, the term “ sons of God ” merely signi¬ 
fying their divine origin, although now debased and corrupted. 
The Book of Enoch, referred to by Jude, contains many chap¬ 
ters describing this event in detail. I will quote part of one 
of them, from which their general tenor may be gathered. 

“ It happened after the sons of men had multiplied in those 

* days, that daughters were born to them elegant and beautiful. 
‘ And when the angels, the sons of heaven, beheld them, they 
‘ became enamoured of them, saying to each other: Come, let 

* us select for ourselves wives from the progeny of men, and 

* let us beget children. Then their leader Samyaza said to 

* them, I fear that you may be perhaps indisposed to the per- 

< formance of this enterprise, and that I alone shall suffer for 

< so grievous a crime. But they answered him and said, We all 
4 swear and bind ourselves by mutual execrations, that we will 
4 not change our intention, but execute our projected under- 

* taking. Then they all swore together, and all bound them- 
4 selves by mutual execrations. Their whole number was two 

* hundred, who descended upon Ardis, which is the top of 

* Mount Armon. That mountain therefore they called Armon, 
4 because they had sworn upon it and bound themselves by 
‘ mutual execrations. These are the names of their chiefs— 
4 Samyaza, 1 who was their leader, Urakabarameel, Akibeel, 
‘ Tamiel, Kamuel, Danel, Azkeel, Sarakuyel, Asael, Armers, 
‘ Batraal, Anane, Zavabe, Samsaveel, Ertael, Turel, Yomyael, 
‘ Arazyal. These were the prefects of the two hundred angels, 
‘ and the remainder were all with them. Then they took 
4 wives, each choosing for himself, whom they began to 

1 Samyaza may possibly be the Samas of the Accadians. 


THE BOOK OF ENOCH. 


2(55 


< approach, and with whom they cohabited, teaching them 

< sorcery, incantations, and the dividing of roots and trees ; and 

* the women conceiving, brought forth giants/* These are the 
Nephilim or giants alluded to in the fourth verse of the sixth 
chapter of Genesis. 

The efforts of Michael, Gabriel, Kaphael, Suryal, and Uriel, 
•and the unfallen angels to intercede for those who had com¬ 
mitted this wrong, and to preserve the earth from the fatal 
consequences of the act which involved the race in destruc¬ 
tion, are fully recounted in this rejected book, which, however, 
was undoubtedly anterior to Christianity, was accepted as in¬ 
spired by Jude, Tertullian, Irenteus, Clement of Alexandria, 
^and other early Christians, and what is more important, 
alluded to in the Sohar of the Kabbalah,—“ The Holy and 
‘ Blessed One,” it is said, “ raised him, Enoch, from the world 

* to serve Him, as it is written, for God took him. From that 
A time a book was delivered down, which was called the Book 

* of Enoch. In the hour that God took him, He showed him 
all the repositories above. He showed him the tree of life 

4 in the midst of the garden, its leaves and its branches: we 

* see all in this book.” The Book of Enoch loses none of its 
interest from the fact that it cannot possibly have been 
written by Enoch, but by some Jew, probably about two 
centuries B.C., who fancied himself inspired by Enoch, and 
whose inspirations, from whatever source, certainly possess a 
high interest and value, as having both an internal sense of 
their own, and throwing light upon the internal sense of 
those included in the canon of Scripture. According to the 
Accadian cosmogony, the Siddiin or fallen angels are rep¬ 
resented by the Anunagi, the Seraphim by the Igigi, the 
•deluge was caused by Mul-lil, who was the devil, and whose 
wife, Nin-lil, is the Lilith of the Hebrew tradition, the first 
wife of Adam of the Talmud, and the “bright monster,’* 
mentioned by Isaiah, ch. xxxiv., v. 14. 

The result of this contact between the Siddim and the 
human race tended rapidly to infernalise the latter. Hence 
we are told that “ every imagination of the thoughts of his 
‘ heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord 

* that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him to 

* His heart.” 


266 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


Making allowance for tlie anthropomorphic conception of 
the Deity which pervades this passage, we gather from it 
plainly, that it was thus that the great change which was 
impending, was afterwards accounted for; as the idea of the 
inevitable operation of law was foreign to the mind of the 
writer. What really happened was this; the conflict of 
currents, which had been for cycles in antagonism in the 
organism of man and of nature, now again culminated, and a 
new chemical change was operated throughout the universe,, 
by which it was once more convulsed; of this convulsion the 
records are to be found in the glacial epoch, in the sub¬ 
mergence of some of the earth’s surface, and in many other 
evidences of disturbance and modification, both of a physical 
and climatic nature. Under this influence the especial region 
that may be said to have been the seat of the disease—for 
it was the point of contact between the opposite poles of the 
battery—disappeared beneath the ocean. Hence come the 
traditions of the flood, which are to be found in some form or 
other in all the most ancient religions, which had derived 
them, as well as the knowledge of the high truths which had 
been imparted by the Seraphim to the submerged races, and 
of which the remains have been handed down to us in the 
religions of the East, from a fragment of the race which sur¬ 
vived the catastrophe, known under the name of Noah. 

“And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have 
‘ created, from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and 
‘ the creeping thing; and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth 
£ me that I have made them,” signifies the confusion which 
had been created upon the Edenic continent by the commerce 
of the Lamech race with visitants from the previous world, 
whereby physical and animal nature was becoming tainted, 
and the action of the Siddim which had been centred upon 
it, with a view to its destruction, finally culminated in catas¬ 
trophic changes upon the earth’s surface, above described, 
resulting in the more or less gradual submergence and up¬ 
heaval of certain portions of it, and in the extinction of the 
races which had become entirely dominated by them. 

The protection afforded to the race of Noah, who alone 
retained a knowledge of divine primitive truth, is figured by 
the ark, into which the animals entered by pairs, thus symbol- 


THE ANTIQUITY OF RELIGION. 


267 


ising the principle of pure bisexual love, which the Hoachic 
race still preserved as a religious belief, and which therefore 
constituted their salvation, and that of the region in which 
they found a refuge. It was this ark which was destined to 
preserve for humanity all its most profound religious ideas; 
for all the fading religions of the world owe their parentage 
to the knowledge of divine truth which this race transmitted 
from the most ancient times, and in which they had been in¬ 
structed by the Seraphim. 1 From this time forth these angel 
visitations w T ere destined to be comparatively rare, though ,the 
legends of mythology are based upon them, and we have no 
fewer than a hundred and sixteen allusions to angels in the 
Bible, either as recording instances of their appearances to 
man, or as referring to their functions in his behalf. 

Meantime those portions of the earth’s surface which were 
unaffected by the catastrophe known as the flood, were in¬ 
habited by the descendants of the polygamist Lamech race,, 
who, having lost every vestige of divine truth, had long before 
sunk to the promiscuous condition of almost brute beasts, 
with their cannibalism, their fetich-worship, and other un¬ 
holy rites. It is from the crude perverted instincts of these 
races that Mr Herbert Spencer and other philosophers have 
built up an evolutionary theory of the religious sentiment in 
man, deriving it, if we trace the theory to its origin, from the 
moral instinct of the amoeba. Professor Max Muller, in hi& 
4 Chips from a German Workshop,’ discussing the ancient re¬ 
ligions of the East, on the same lines, ascribes to the earliest 
Yedas an antiquity of only about B.c. 1500, and in his ‘ Science 
of Religion,’ he tells us that the polytheism and mythology 
that they contain are the childish prattle of religion. “ The 
‘ world had its childhood, and when it was a child it spoke 
‘ as a child, it understood as a child, it thought as a child ” 
but differing totally from Mr Herbert Spencer, he continues, 
“ and I say again, in that it spoke as a child, its language was- 
‘ true, in that it believed as a child, its religion was true. 
‘ The fault rests with us if we insist on taking the language 
‘ of infants for the language of men. . . . The language 
‘ of antiquity is the language of infancy. . . . The child- 

1 Hence we find the ark preserved in the Egyptian and Babylonian religiona 
as a sacred symbol, long before the time of Moses. 


268 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


* ish prattle of religion is not extinct, witness the religion of 

* India.” 1 Geological science here, at all events, comes to 
our rescue, and proves to us that the human race was hoary- 
headed, having been many hundreds of thousands of years 
up)n the earth in the year B.c. 1500, when the Professor calls 
it in its infancy. In the last three thousand years, after a 
childhood of unexampled length, the race has suddenly shot 
up into a man, and these learned professors are the result. 
So blind is science, when it leaves facts and begins to formu¬ 
late theories, to the logical absurdities into which it is driven 
by its own discoveries. It is, however, some satisfaction to 
^obtain from science the admission that the religion of the 
world’s infancy was true. 

We are now able to trace profane history with tolerable 
distinctness to the year 1500 before the flood, as given in 
the Biblical chronology, which places the birth of Enos at 
•a period as nearly as possible contemporary with that which 
Professor Sayce assigns to the Hymns of the Sun-God of 
Sippara at the court of Sargon of Accad, which, he con¬ 
siders, marks the period of the commencement of Semitic 
literature. 

The Biblical chronology, therefore, with many of its time- 
honoured illusions, must be abandoned as being several hun¬ 
dred thousand years out of date, if we are to take the geologi¬ 
cal evidence furnished by the miocene flints found at Thenay, 
and which were undoubtedly shapen by human hands, pos¬ 
sibly of the race of Lamech; while the fact that Eridu, now 
twenty-five miles inland, was, at the date assigned to the 
creation of the world, the seaport of the Euphrates, and the 
-seat of Babylonian commerce with Arabia and India, is now 
pretty well established. 

Professor Sayce, however, seriously interferes with Pro¬ 
fessor Max Muller’s ethnological theories, when he describes 
our ancestors as a “ fair-haired, blue-eyed, light-complexioned, 
dolichocephalic race, which is still found in its greatest purity 
in Scandinavia.” 

Pieferring to this and other utterances of the Hibbert lec¬ 
turer, the ‘ Times ’ says: “ These are some of the instances 

* which show how science advances and changes. What was 

1 The Science of Religion, p. 278. 


FALLACY OF SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 


269' 


* thought to be demonstrated in 1861, is now known to have 
‘ been little more than brilliant guesswork. Eacts accumulate, 
‘ and old theories are proved by them to be untenable. 
‘ Meantime the world takes us to new positions; but it is. 
‘ just as well that it should admit that they, too, are only 
‘ provisionally occupied.” But this is exactly what the world 
does not do. It is as difficult for a philosopher to learn 
humility in this respect, as a bishop. 

The formulating of theories is especially dangerous where 
they refer to the religious instinct of man, and are based upon 
the evidences of that instinct which he may have left, either 
in the shape of carved monuments and hieroglyphs, as in 
Egypt, or engraved tablets, as in Babylonia and Assyria. 
Because the earliest record from the modern point of view 
superstitious belief in evil spirits, and forms of exorcism and 
magic, and the great Deity is veiled under symbols which 
have an inner meaning, which is quite beyond the reach of 
“ professors,” it by no means follows that their conclusions as 
to the religious ideas of the initiated classes in those early 
days is sound. Indeed the very fact that the ancients be¬ 
lieved in possession by evil spirits, and used methods of 
exorcism, shows a far more accurate knowledge of the mys~ 
teries of nature than is possessed in these days. 

The faculties do not exist in the learned men of our time 
for tracing the history of religious thought. To do so involves 
a moral training which is incompatible with the requirements 
of modern civilisation, and with a residence in the vortex of its- 
superstitions, its infidelity, and its corruption. This applies 
no less to the theologians than to the men of science; and to- 
understand the profound conceptions which underlie the sym¬ 
bols and carvings, the prayers and the legends, of the religions, 
of Egypt and Babylon, requires not only the diligence, intelli¬ 
gence, and skill which have enabled those who have devoted 
themselves to the study, to decipher the external meaning; 
but that divine intuition by which alone light can be obtained 
that shall enable them to apprehend their esoteric sense. 

In point of fact, the religions and superstitions of the 
world spring from two sources. No philosophic analyses of 
them, or deductions in regard to them, drawn from analogy > 
possess any value, which do not recognise their twofold origin. 


270 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


and the nature and operation of the influences from the 
invisible world to which they have been subjected. 

The great majority of the races we call savage—that is, 
of those which compose the lowest human type, and whose 
superstitions are the most debased, revolting, and inhuman— 
are descendants of the antediluvian races, who, as I before 
explained, fell under the curse attaching to the polygamous 
crime of Lamech, and who, being specially open to Siddistic 
invasion, have introduced the insanities, cruelties, and lusts 
of the fallen region into this world, and thus minister to an 
ignorant, degraded, and absolutely perverted religious instinct. 
They continue to derive their inspiration from the lower 
invisible region of our universe, where the same practices 
prevail. 

The other class of religions, which may be traced back 
through Egypt, Babylonia, and India, although, in the most 
degraded expression of them which has reached us, they may 
offer some analogy to the debased superstitions of which we 
have been speaking, owe this degradation also to Siddistic 
invasion, which, however, was never able absolutely to obscure 
the remains of the religion of the Noachic race, which was a 
far purer, loftier, and more sublime spiritual conception than 
;any of which we have any idea; and the period immediately 
following the deluge is that which has been handed down to 
Lis by tradition, as the period of the “ golden age ”—a period 
indicated in Scripture by the words, “ And the whole earth 
was of one language and of one speech.” 

Once more humanity made a new departure—from a lower 
level, it is true, than that which had characterised the earlier 
stages of its existence, but still on a far higher level than 
that to whicli it afterwards sank; and it is to this subsequent 
history that we must now turn our attention. 


271 


CHAPTER XVII. 

THE NOACHIC RACE—THE GUARDIANS OF THE MYSTERY—TRANSMITTED 
TO THE ABRAMIC—MAGNETIC CONDITIONS OF THE HOLY LAND—THE 
DIVINE TRINITY OF THE EARLY RELIGIONS—ANALOGY OF THE RE¬ 
LIGION OF ACC AD WITH THAT OF THE JEWS — THE SECRET CON¬ 
TAINED IN THE LAW OF MOSES—THE FULFILMENT OF THE LAW— 
EFFECT OF MODERN CRITICISM ON JUDAISM. 

We are now approaching the historic period, though the date 
of the catastrophe alluded to in the last chapter, and the 
golden age which succeeded it, was a great many thousands 
of years prior to that assigned to it in the Biblical chronology. 
The region occupied by the Noachic race and its subdivisions 
was all that part of Central Asia, extending from Persia to 
China, including Thibet, Turcomania, and Northern India. 
The legend of the Tower of Babel, which subsequently found 
a literal expression in Chaldea, symbolises the pride and 
arrogance by which this race began to be puffed up, in con¬ 
sequence of the high pitch of moral, intellectual, and material 
■development to which they had attained; and the “ confusion 
•of tongues ” signifies the quarrels which ensued, and the reli¬ 
gious schisms resulting therefrom, which finally culminated 
in widespread migrations even as far as Scandinavia—giving 
rise to those divisions in the human family which are known 
.somewhat incorrectly among us as Aryan, Semitic, Turanian, 
Dravidian, and so forth; and to sundry religions, in all of 
which were to be discovered the fundamental ideas upon 
which the Noachic religion was founded, but which by 
degrees became so distorted and debased, in order to meet 
the popular comprehension, to subserve local conditions, and 
to pander to priestly ambition, that they ended by presenting 


272 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


widely different superficial conceptions, and became degraded 
into polytheisms, idolatries, and superstitions, of various types 
and character. 

The most remarkable feature, however, of these early reli¬ 
gions was the prominent position assigned to the vital prin¬ 
ciple. Emblems of reproduction were almost invariably 
objects of religious worship. Mysteries were celebrated in 
their honour, and much of the most profound occult lore was 
devoted to the conservation of secrets which had been derived 
from the ISToachic race on this subject. Any one who will 
take the trouble to study the early religions, especially if 
they are at all initiated into their internal or mystical sense, 
will find that this is so, and I need not dwell upon it more 
particularly now; my object being to show that a special 
method had been provided for the preservation of the most 
profound mystery of all, from the knowledge of the vulgar, 
until the time had arrived when it might be revealed; and 
the transcendent value of the Bible, over other sacred books, 
consists in this, that it is the only one of them which contains 
in its inner sense, the history of the conservation of the- 
secret, as well as the secret itself, which has defied the pene¬ 
tration of the ages, and which had to be preserved in a form 
that could afterwards be unfolded. It concealed the kernel, 
of which the literal meaning was the husk; and mankind has 
behaved in regard to it very much as a savage might, who- 
was intrusted with a bottle containing spirits of wine as a 
remedy for his ailment, but which was corked in such a 
manner, lest the spirit should escape before he was intelligent 
enough to know how to apply it, that he ended by thinking 
that the virtue lay in the bottle, and that by keeping tight 
hold of that, he could be cured. 

But not only was it necessary to embody it in a written 
record, but to find a custodian for it, and for that purpose a 
special race was chosen to whom it should be confided, and 
the history of that race, which was contained in that record, 
was to symbolise the history of human development in regard 
to the mystery they guarded; and a man of that race was to- 
appear at a precise period of that history, who should embody 
in his life and death the occult fulfilment of it, and prepare 
mankind for its full revelation in his own person; and inas- 


EARLY GUARDIANS OF THE TRUTH. 


273 


much as the special race failed to recognise the fulfilment of 
their law—which more especially contained the mystery— 
in the person of Him whom they crucified, those who are 
called by His name now also guard the sacred book, become 
doubly sacred, since it contains the record, however imper¬ 
fect, of the life and death of Him whose life was destined to 
be the light of men, and whose death their redemption. 

On the dispersion of the Noachic race, those who retained 
the fullest measure of the divine truth were those who re¬ 
mained behind, and who transmitted it to their descendants, 
among the earliest of whom were Eama and Chrishna, who 
were turned into mythological personages, but through whom 
came the traditions which afterwards found expression in the 
Vedas. By this time, however, they had become corrupted, 
and overlaid with myth, by human transmission and repro¬ 
duction, and were only preserved in a comparatively un¬ 
tainted form, by a small group of persons who were the 
descendants of those who had filled exalted priestly functions 
during the golden age, and who had migrated to Palestine 
and established themselves at Jerusalem, where they retained 
a knowledge of the secrets which had been transmitted to 
them in their purity. This sect is internally signified in the 
Bible by the name Shem. 

Meantime we find relics of them in Chaldea, and subse¬ 
quently in Persia, where a highly inspired teacher and sage 
appeared in the person of Zoroaster, who reformed to some 
extent the Vedantic religion, and reproduced some of the old 
truths in the Zend-Avesta and other Mazdean writings, thus 
founding a new school of mysticism, the influence of which 
was speedily felt in Assyria and the neighbouring countries. 1 

At this time there lived in Chaldea a sect who had also 
preserved many of these truths, and who warmly identified 
themselves with the attempt of Zoroaster to revive them; but 
the Chaldeans resented any interference with the abuses they 
had introduced, and with the superstitions of a debased type 
to which they clung, and hence arose a strife, to which the 
Talmud contains many allusions ; for the leader of these re- 

1 A much later date is usually assigned to Zoroaster than the period above 
indicated, which is rather in accordance with Parsee tradition than learned, 
conjecture. 


S 


274 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


formers is known to us in the Bible as Abram, who found 
himself compelled, with his followers, to quit the country of 
his birth and seek a refuge in Egypt. The whole of the history 
of Abram, Sarai, and their posterity, contains, as Paul tells us, 
an interior or allegorical meaning, bearing upon the nature of 
the great trust which was to be confided to him and to his 
descendants, and which was to prove a blessing to all human¬ 
ity. Therefore God is reported to have said to him, “ In thee 
shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” 

The affinity which still exists between the Parsee and 
Jewish religious ideas may be traced to this early connection 
between Abram and Zoroaster, and the parallelism which has 
attended the fortunes of the two peoples. The exclusiveness 
and fidelity with which they have both clung to their ancient 
traditions, is not without its significance. As, at this period, 
the priests of Egypt were deeply learned in the occult lore of 
Chaldea, Persia, India, and Thibet, the expelled sect was led 
thither by Abram, but were received coldly. The internal 
signification of this journey is the rejection of the principle of 
the pure Divine Feminine, represented in the person of Sarai, 
by the Egyptians. 

Pieturning to Canaan, Abram was received at Jerusalem by 
the last representative of that group of holy men to whom 
had been intrusted the divine mysteries, to whom I have 
already referred as having migrated thither long previously, 
and who throughout the period following the confusion of 
tongues, had preserved the truth intact. Their mission, repre¬ 
sented by the person of Melchizedek, had now come to an end, 
while that of the Jews, represented in the person of Abraham, 
their father, was to begin. 1 Abram, therefore, rendered the most 

1 The Talmud has a tradition somewhat confirmatory of this. Rabbi 
Tochanan ben Nuri says : “ The Holy One, blessed be He, took Shem and 

* separated him to be a priest to Himself that he might serve before Him ; He 

* also caused his Shecliinah to rest with him, and called his name Melchizedek, 

* Priest of the Most High and King of Salem. His brother Japhet even 

* studied the law in his school until Abraham came and also learned the law in 
‘ the school of Shem, where God Himself instructed Abraham, so that all else 

* he had learned from the lips of man was forgotten. Then came Abraham and 
■* prayed to God that the Shechinah (Divine Feminine) might ever rest in the 

house of Shem, which was also promised to him, as it said, Thou art a priest 

for ever after the order of Melchizedek.”—Avodash Hakkodesh, Part III., 
chap. 20. 


MELCHIZEDEK. 


275 


divinely gifted man then alive the homage which was his 
due, and paid him tithes, and was instructed by him in the 
knowledge which he had been brought to this sacred spot to 
acquire; for Jerusalem had even then been chosen as a local 
focus of inspiration, and prepared, by the residence on it of 
those devout men who had been the depositaries of divine 
truth, to be the territorial centre of the race that had been 
selected to succeed them as its custodians. It is for this 
reason that the rare allusions to Melchizedek which the Bible 
contains are pregnant with the deepest meaning, and that Christ 
is called “ a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.” 
That the true significance of his character was known to the 
Jews, is evident from the reference made to him by the writer 
of the Epistle to the Hebrews: “To whom also Abraham 

* gave a tenth part of all; first being by interpretation King 

* of righteousness, and after that also King of Salem, which is, 
4 King of Peace; without father, without mother, without 
‘ descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but 
4 made like unto the Son of God ; abideth a priest continually.” 

In order to apprehend the full significance of this passage, 
we must refer to the origin of the word Melchizedek, as under¬ 
stood by the light of its inner meaning. We find in the 9th 
chapter of ‘ The Lesser Holy Assembly/ concerning the Son 
and His Bride, who are concealed in the last two letters of 
the Tetragrammaton IHVH (Jehovah), an explanation of the 
14th verse of the 89th Psalm, Tzedeq Va-Meshephat , “Justice 
and judgment are the abode of Thy throne;” Chesed Va- 
JEmeth, “ mercy and truth shall go before Thy countenance; ” 
from which we gather that from the Father of all light there 
proceedeth light, for which “two light-bearers are found, which 

< are the conformation of the throne of the King, and they are 
‘ called Tzedek, justice, and Meshephat, judgment. And they 

* are the beginning and the consummation. And through 

< them are all the judgments crowned, as well superior as 

< inferior. And they are all concealed in Meshephat. And 

< from that Meshephat is Tzedek nourished. 

«And sometimes they call the name Meleki Tzedek, Melek 

< Shalem, Melchizedek, King of Salem.” Thus Christ was the 
Light of the world, emanating from the Father of lights, to 
whom the light-bearers were justice and judgment, and thus 


276 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


was he a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek; but 
as we shall see from what follows, because the female prin¬ 
ciple had not been conjoined to the male, disorder ensued. 

“When the judgments are crowned by Meshephat, all 

* things are mercy; and all things are in perfect peace, 

* because the one tempereth the other. 

‘Tzedek and the Rigours are reduced into order, and all 
‘ these descend into the world in peace and mercy. And 
‘ then is the hour sanctified, so that the male and the female 
‘ are united, and the worlds, all and several, exist in love and 
‘ in joy. 

‘But whensoever sins are multiplied in the world, and 
‘ the sanctuary is polluted, and the male and the female are 
‘ separated; 

‘And when that strong serpent beginneth to arise, Woe 
‘ unto thee, 0 World! who in that time art nourished by this 
£ Tzedek. For then arise many slayers of men and execu- 
‘ tioners (of judgments) in thee, 0 World! Many just men 
‘ are withdrawn from thee. 

‘ But wherefore is it thus ? because the male is separated 
‘ from the female; and judgment, Meshephat, is not united 

* unto justice, Tzedek.” 1 

It was to restore this balance between justice and judgment 
that Christ came into the world, and to lay the foundation of 
that union between the male and female principles which 
should enable him to return as Melchizedek, King of peace, 
so that, in the words of the Psalmist, mercy and truth should 
go before His face, and “ that great serpent ” be overthrown. 
The whole of this will be more fully made manifest when we 
come to consider the nature of Him who is called the Son 
of God. 

I may here remark parenthetically, that the three books 
of the New Testament which were written under the most 
powerful inspirational descent, and which are therefore most 
pregnant with hidden truth, are those, the authorship of which 
is most shrouded in mystery—namely, the Gospel of St John, 
the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the book of the Revelation. 

Jerusalem had now become, and has ever since remained, 
in spite of the vicissitudes through which it has passed, the 
1 Mather’s Kabbalah, p. 293. 


MAGNETIC INSPIRATIONAL CONDITIONS. 


277 


most sacred spot on the earth’s surface, for here the sublime 
tragedy was afterwards enacted which was the occult fulfil¬ 
ment of the law that contained the mystery; and this Holy 
City is destined yet to play a part in its final revelation. It 
is thus that surface nature is enlisted in the service of divine 
design, and that the highest forms of inspiration can only 
descend, when the magnetic conditions of soil and climate are 
favourable to certain combinations of the atomic elements of 
the moral, psychical, and physical organisms of those who 
seek it. Medical science recognises this fact in a degree, 
when it recommends change of air and scene as being good 
for the health and spirits; and few persons are so dense organ¬ 
ically, as not to be conscious that a heavy damp air and a 
light dry one affect them differently—while, if their attention 
was sufficiently turned to it, they would also perceive that 
the influence of a heavy clay soil was different from that of a 
light sandy one. 

If this relation between soil and climate and health and 
spirits, is sufficiently palpable for persons who are perfectly 
closed as to their interior faculties to appreciate, it will easily 
be understood that when once these are opened, the organic 
sensitiveness increases to such a degree, that quite a different 
set of sensations may be perceived in one country, from those 
which are felt in another. This is, no doubt, largely due to 
the magnetism radiating from the inhabitants, according to 
their quality. When these are in strong contrast, they be¬ 
come appreciable even to dense persons ; thus there is a 
sensible difference of sensation between walking in the streets 
of London and those of Canton. People have just as much 
right to deny that this is so, as to deny the existence of an 
odour because they cannot smell it, though others can. 

The magnetic conditions which conduce to inspirational 
receptivity, are warmth, light, clearness, and a certain amount 
of rarefaction of atmosphere, and therefore of elevation, with a 
light soil and a nature sparsely inhabited, or, in other words, 
as free as possible from human taint. But there are other 
essential conditions of a more internal kind, which are con¬ 
nected with the history of the locality, as affected by the charr 
acter of the influences which have at different times centred 
upon it. Thus, wherever an opening has been made by a 


278 


SCIENTIFIC BELIGION. 


stream of inspiration upon it more or less constant, there 
nature is peculiarly bounteous in her response to the man who 
is struggling to offer himself to the highest sources of light; 
for her atoms always retain the original impregnation of the 
divine life, which descended through them to the hearts and 
brains of men, who received their inspiration in her solitudes. 
For although, as I have said, preparation for the highest in¬ 
spiration must be acquired in the busy hum of men, and in 
active service for them, as well as in occasional retirement, 
the descent itself can only take place in comparative solitude, 
in conditions of environment peculiarly adapted to it, and 
in the especial locality indicated: therefore Moses ascended 
Mount Sinai, and remained there for forty days and nights; 
and Christ withdrew for the same period to a solitary moun¬ 
tain before He began His ministry; and Buddha retired for 
forty-seven days into the wilderness of Uravila to be tempted 
of the devil. 

I have been led into this digression, because it has been 
necessary to account for the flood of inspiration which de¬ 
scended upon the Jewish prophets during the residence of 
the race in what is called the Holy Land, and also to explain 
why, when that race had proved itself unworthy of the high 
mission which had been confided to it, it was necessary to 
banish it from the land, in order that the elements which ex¬ 
isted there suitable for inspirational descents, should be puri¬ 
fied and restored, for they had already suffered corruption. 
Therefore it was that the land was condemned to a period of 
desolation—for nature, like man, requires to be devastated 
in order to be purified: and this land, once so densely pop¬ 
ulated, has had to lie fallow for fifteen hundred years ; its 
flourishing cities heaps of ruins, and its population dwindling 
down to a mere fraction of that with which it formerly 
teemed. But this period of desolation has drawn almost to 
its close, and new conditions have been induced, which will 
fit it once more for its high destiny. 

The future of the race to whom it once belonged must de¬ 
pend upon themselves. In order to show why this is so, we 
must recur to their history from the time when the land was 
given to Abram and his seed for an heritage. With Abram 
himself a solemn covenant was made, the terms of which are 


THE TRINITY. 


279 


contained in the first fourteen verses of the seventeenth chapter 
of Genesis, and the confirmation of which was the change 
which took place in the names both of himself and of Sarai— 
in the case of Abram, by introducing the feminine letter “ he,” 
and in that of Sarai by cutting off the masculine letter “ jod,” 
and adding “ he,” thus signifying that to them and to their seed, 
was intrusted the guardianship of the mystery of the Divine 
Feminine being concealed within the Divine Masculine. 

It is worthy of note that on the occasion of this covenant 
we, for the first time, find the word “ Shaddai ” used as a 
name for the Almighty,—a word of the deepest and holiest 
import, for in its internal meaning it signifies the Divine 
Feminine. We now know God in one aspect of his Trinity; 
as Elohim, when He created the first world; as Jehovah, 
when out of its wreck He reconstructed, and then destroyed, 
a great portion of the world which succeeded it, and again 
when He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah ; and now we hear 
of Him as Shaddai, in connection with the peopling of the 
world, because not only in His promises to Abram, but in 
other places where this name is mentioned it is generally in 
a similar connection; thus He says to Jacob in the thirty-fifth 
chapter of Genesis : “ I am Shaddai; be fruitful and multiply.” 
In the Hindoo religion we find the same Triad, represented by 
Brahma, Siva, Vishnu—the Creator, the Destroyer, the Pre¬ 
server ; in the case of the Litter he is often represented in 
Hindoo temples as having many breasts,—an idea which was 
signified by the word “ Shad,” meaning in Hebrew a breast. 
Each member of the Hindoo Triad is androgynous,—Brahma, 
with His complement, Sarasvati, and here we have them rep¬ 
resented almost identically in the words Abraham and Sarah, 
as the earthly prototype; Siva, with his complement, Devi; 
and Vishnu with Lakshmi. The Sakti or feminine comple¬ 
ment of the Deity with whom she forms one, “ has its roots,” 
Mr Barth tells us, “ far away in those ideas, as old as India it- 
‘ self, of a sexual dualism placed at the beginning of things 
4 (in a Brahmana of the Yajur-Veda, for instance, Prajapati 
4 is androgynous), or a common womb in which beings are 
4 formed, which also is their common tomb.” 1 

The parallel between the two religions, as showing how 
1 The Religions of India, p. 200. 


280 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


much of the Jewish nomenclature is derived from one still 
older, and containing the same idea, may still further be 
illustrated by the name given to Jacob when he struggled 
with the “ man,”—who was in fact one of the Seraphim,—and 
who changed his name from Jacob to Israel: the masculine 
principle is called in the Vedas, Iswara, which is allied with 
or encloses the feminine Prakriti, hence we get Iswara-El or 
Israel. Therefore Jacob raised an altar which contained the 
whole mystery in its name, and called it El-Elohe-Israel. 

But the time was at hand when this mystery was going to 
be embodied more permanently and elaborately than by an 
altar, and for this purpose a man was specially prepared, of 
remarkable character and attainments, who was destined to 
become celebrated as the great lawgiver of Israel, and the 
reputed author of the Pentateuch, and who is always called 
in Scripture the “ man of the Elohim,” which, as before re¬ 
marked, is a feminine plural. The training of Moses as a 
priest of the Temple of the Sun in Egypt, the high pro¬ 
tection he enjoyed as the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter, 
and his own force of character and abilities, singularly 
qualified him for his lofty mission. For this he was still 
further prepared by his long residence with his father-in-law, 
Jethro, the priest of Midian, who was more deeply initiated 
than any man at that time in the most hidden knowledge 
which he imparted to Moses. This is indicated by the 
deference which the latter paid to his advice, and the authority 
with which he tendered it, as when he says: “ Hearken now 
‘ unto my voice, I will give thee counsel, and God shall be 

* with thee: Be thou for thy people God-ward, that thou 

* mayest bring the causes to God.” 1 

The mysteries which Moses had received from the tradi¬ 
tions handed down from Abraham and his sons, together with 
the stores of occult knowledge he had acquired from Jethro, 
and from his training in the mystical lore of Egyptian wor¬ 
ship, especially qualified him for the task of perpetuating 

1 There is a curious kabbalistic legend as to the connection which subsisted 
between Moses and Jethro, according to which, Cain had robbed the twin 
sister of Abel, and therefore his soul passed into Jethro. Moses was possessed 
by the soul of Abel, and therefore Jethro gave his daughter to Moses.—Yalkut 
Chadash, fol. 127, col. 3. 


THE MOST ANCIENT TEMPLE. 


281 


them, for preservation by his people, in a form by which 
they should be concealed in the letter of the law, and the 
■ceremonial observances which symbolised its deeper meaning; 
and this had become the more necessary, as the Jews had 
fallen into the habits of worship of the common people among 
the Egyptians, and were losing their sense of the majesty of 
God, in their veneration for His attributes under the forms of 
animals. 

It is desirable here to notice the many similarities which 
exist between the Mosaic theology and that of Accad, from 
which, as well as from the funereal ritual of Egypt, it was 
in great part derived—more for the sake of directing atten¬ 
tion to them, than with any view of following them into 
detail, which would occupy too much space. The most 
ancient religious observance of which we have any record 
is that of the Sabbath. It was strictly enforced upon the 
people of Eridu more than a thousand years before it was 
enjoined as a commandment upon Moses. So we have records 
at the same period of vicarious sacrifices, of distinctions made 
between clean and unclean animals, and of the rite of circum¬ 
cision; while here, as in Egypt, we have the Ark and the 
Temple, with its Holy of Holies, with its veil which concealed 
the mysteries. “ Within,” says Professor Sayce, “ the Temple 

* bore a striking likeness to that of Solomon. At the ex- 

* treme end was the Paraku, or Holy of Holies, concealed by a 
4 curtain or veil from the eyes of the profane. . . . There 

< seems to be evidence that the institution of the shew-bread 
4 was known in Babylonia—‘ On the high altar mayest thou 
4 found a place of feeding ’— i.e., a table of shew-bread. . . . 

* The coffer of the little temple of Imgur-Bel, or Balawat, 

< resembled in form the arks or ships, as they were termed, in 

< which the gods were carried in religious processions. It 
4 thus gives us a fair idea of what the Israelitish Ark of the 

* Covenant must have been like.” 1 

So we have the Kerubu or Cherubim, whose function it was 
to guard the mysteries of the Temple, while the duties and 
ranks of the hierarchy bear a striking resemblance to that of 
the Jews. In fact it is clear that, whether they understood 
it or not, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, and the Hindoos 

1 Hibbert Lectures, pp. 64, 65, 66. 


282 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


were all ancient custodians of the mystery which was now to 
be confided to Moses, under an outward symbolism and ordi¬ 
nance analogous in externals to that under which it had 
always been concealed. 

The time has now arrived to explain the secret which the 
law that Moses gave to his people contains. It is described 
in a few words by Paul in the third chapter of his first* 
Epistle to Timothy, though the translators of the New 
Testament have apparently for ecclesiastical purposes cut 
off the first line of the sixteenth verse to which it belongs, 
and added it on to the end of the fifteenth, thus making the- 
last lines of the latter read—“Which is the Church of the 
living God, the pillar and ground of the truth; ” whereas- 
the pillar and ground of the truth is not applied to the 
Church at all, but to the mystery of godliness, and the six¬ 
teenth verse should read — “The pillar and ground of the 
truth — and undoubtedly great — is the mystery of godli¬ 
ness.” 1 The apostle then goes on to tell us what this 
mystery, which is the pillar and ground of the truth, is— 
“He who was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, 
seen of angels, preached unto Gentiles, believed on in the 
world, received up into glory.” This mystery was revealed 
to Paul, but only in so far as the world to whom he preached 
could apprehend it—though we have indications that he him¬ 
self perceived more of its real significance than externally 
appeared in his writings—as, for instance, where he says: 
“ If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God 
‘ which is given me to you-ward: how that by revelation He 
‘ made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few 
4 words, whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my know- 
‘ ledge in the mystery of Christ;) which in other ages was not 
‘ made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed 
' unto His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.” 2 And 
Paul describes the revelation made to him when he was- 
caught up into the third heaven, and heard “unspeakable 

1 This tendency of the translators, possibly unconscious to themselves, to 
give inaccurate renderings of the original, so as to support ecclesiastical 
dogmas, of which many instances occur both in the Old and New Testaments, 
even in the revised version, is very unfortunate and misleading. 

2 Ephesians iii. 2-5. 


THE MYSTERY CONTAINED IN THE LAW. 


2sa 


words ” which it was not lawful for him then to utter; so- 
again he alludes to the mystery “ which had been hid from 
‘ ages and from generations, but now is made manifest in the- 

* saints, and to the revelation of the mystery which was kept 
‘ secret since the world began.” 

This mystery is dwelt upon with great power and detail in 
the Book of Enoch. Considering that this book was un¬ 
doubtedly written before the advent of Christ upon earth, the 
numerous references which it contains to the Messianic- 
function and secret are in the highest degree interesting. I 
will content myself, however, with one quotation: “ In that. 

*. day shall all the kings, the princes, the exalted, and those 
4 who possess the earth stand up, behold, and perceive, that He 
‘ is sitting on the throne of His glory; that before Him the- 
‘saints shall be judged in righteousness; and that nothing 
‘ which shall be spoken before Him shall be spoken in vain.. 

‘ . . . One portion of them shall look upon another. They 
‘ shall be astonished and humble their countenance, and 
‘ trouble shall seize them when they shall behold this Son of 
c woman sitting upon the throne of His glory. Then shall the 
‘ kings, the princes, and all who possess the earth, glorify Him 
‘ who has dominion over all things, who was concealed; for,. 

‘ from the beginning, the Son of man existed in secret, whom 
‘ the Most High preserved in the presence of His power, and 
‘ revealed to the elect. He shall sow the congregation of the 
‘ saints, and of the elect, and all the elect shall stand before 

* Him in that day. All the kings, the princes, the exalted, 

* and those who rule over the earth, shall fall down on their 
‘ faces before Him, and shall worship Him. They shall fix. 

‘ their hopes on this Son of Man, shall pray to Him, and peti- 
‘ tion Him for mercy.” 1 

The Messiah of Enoch is the Messiah in which the orthodox 
Jews still believe. As Professor Marks tells us: “The more 

* troublous the time, the more hostile fanaticism waxed, the i 
‘ closer the Jew clung to the hope that persecution would 

‘ gradually abate, although its spirit might flicker at intervals 
‘ and that the crowning scene of the Messianic drama would 
1 realise the Psalmist’s anticipation of mercy and truth meeting: 

‘ together, and righteousness and peace being locked in fond. 

1 Book of Enoch, chap. 61. 



284 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


* embrace. This idea finds its most intense expression in the 

* apocalyptic books of Daniel and Enoch, Sirach, and the 

* Sibylline Leaves, all of which date downwards from about 

* the year 170 before the Christian era.” 1 

The Kabbalah, in the Sohar, alludes to the Book of Enoch 
as having been “ carefully preserved from generation to gen- 
•eration.” 

The fact that the Messiah is called the Son of woman and 
ithe Son of man in almost the same passage, and the assertion 
ithat notwithstanding He was the Son of woman and of man, 
He had existed in secret from the beginning as such, indicates 
on the part o.f the author of this book a very deep intromis¬ 
sion into the sacred mysteries. 

This mystery, which has generally been assumed by theo¬ 
logians to be the scheme of the atonement, contains, in fact, 
^another and altogether different signification; though, in its 
primitive sense, the word atonement, or at-one-ment, is ex¬ 
actly applicable to it. That different sense is to be found 
in the inner meaning of the law of Moses, which while it 
•contains arcana too profound for us yet to penetrate, still 
supplies us with all that is needful for our present re¬ 
quirements, for it shows us how Christ was its fulfilment, 
•as He said, “ I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil 
it.” It shows us how “ the law having a shadow of good 
things to come, and not the very image of the things, can 
never with those sacrifices which they offered year by 

* year make us perfect; ” it shows us how “ Christ is the 
•end of the law unto righteousness, unto every one that be- 
lieveth.” It shows us how, what “ the law could not do, in 

* that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own 
** Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned 
** sin in the flesh: that the ordinance of the law might be 

* fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the 

* Spirit; ” and Christ Himself said, after He was risen, to His 
•disciples, “ These are the words which I spake unto you, while 

* I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which 
‘ was written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and 
■* in the Psalms, concerning me.” But although we are told 

1 Professor Marks on the Jews in modern times—* Jewish Chronicle/ 17th 
^February 1885. 


THE MYSTERY CONTAINED IN THE LAW. 285* 


that He opened their understanding that they might under¬ 
stand the Scriptures, the time had not come for them to- 
penetrate its meaning. He had to adapt the fulfilment of 
the law to their gross conceptions, as Moses had been obliged 
to adapt the law itself to the moral and intellectual condition 
of the people to whom he gave it. The apostles’ minds were- 
still too much impregnated with the Jewish conception of 
the Deity, as a god in the likeness of a man, with all the- 
passions of anger, jealousy, and vindictiveness, delighting in 
the blood of bulls and of goats, and of propitiatory sacrifices,, 
to conceive of any other fulfilment of the law but that of a 
stupendous sacrifice which should take the place of all these, 
and therefore they imagined that this fearful Deity could 
derive satisfaction from the sacrifice of His own Son, as a 
propitiatory offering for the sins of the race He had Him¬ 
self created. This darkened their understanding; and hence 
their conception of “ repentance and remission of sins,” which 
“ should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning 
at Jerusalem,” resolved itself into an elaboration of this pro¬ 
pitiatory scheme, which has ever since been received among 
Christian Churches as the fulfilment of the law, accomplished 
in the person of Christ, and has thrown a veil over their 
moral vision, which has prevented men from recognising 
what the real internal meaning of the law was, in what the- 
fulfilment consisted, and what was the true nature of that 
mystery which has “ been kept secret since the world began,”' 
which could only be revealed by the apostles through the* 
imperfect medium that their own crude moral condition pro¬ 
vided, and which, had their perceptions been more deeply 
internal, would have been premature, and unfitted them to* 
appeal to the moral and intellectual capacity of the congre¬ 
gations they addressed. 

Nevertheless, much of the spirit of their teaching has been 
overlooked, and the literal meaning of their words strained 
in a wrong sense, into the construction of dogmas foreign to 
the whole tendency of their thought. Many passages have- 
seemed obscure, which, read by the light which a knowledge- 
of the mysteries throws upon them, become not only compre¬ 
hensible, but indicate that the apostles themselves knew 
a great deal more than they could give to the people; and 


286 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


this is confirmed by the fact, which a study of the early 
history of the Church will reveal pretty plainly, that there 
was among themselves a class of initiated, who met for secret 
rites and worship—a fact which is not denied by Tertullian, 
~as we read of “ mysteries which were to be kept secret and 
4 concealed from all except the faithful, inasmuch as to others 
r< the very manner and method of their actions were unknown, 

* which was observed by the pagans, who objected to the 

* Christians and the secrecy of their mysteries, which charge 
< Tertullian does not deny, but, confessing it, answers that it 
'* was the very nature of mysteries to be concealed, as Ceres 
‘ were in Samothracia.” 1 But these Christian initiates were 
in advance of the age, and were crushed by the early Church 
as soon as it had firmly established itself at Rome. Paul, 
indeed, alludes to the incapacity of the converts generally to 
receive truth in its more essential degree, when he told them 
that he could only feed them with milk, not with meat, for 
they were not able to bear it—“ Nay, not even now are ye 
•able to bear it, for ye are yet carnal.” It has taken nearly 
two thousand years for the meat which was withheld by 
the apostles, and which is therefore not contained exoter- 
ically in their teaching, to be food adapted for the mind 
of the educated classes; but a new dispensation is dawn¬ 
ing upon the world, and therefore it is that the mystery 
may be revealed; for the religious instinct craves earn¬ 
estly for new food, and that food is contained in the inter¬ 
nal meaning of the law of Moses, and of the Psalms, and 
•of the Book of Job, and in the prophets, and in the New 
Testament. 

It is not necessary for those who seek this new food to 
•cast away the book they have so long cherished in the letter, 
but rather for some who receive their spiritual enlightenment 
in that way to study it; while to others it can be imparted 
otherwise, more secretly and more effectively, and to them 
the book will ever be a blessed confirmation of their own 
discoveries and experiences, but it will not be necessary for 
them, any more than a stick which has been a support to 

. An Inquiry into the Constitution, Discipline, Unity, and Worship of the 
Primitive Church within the first Three Hundred Years after Christ. Pub¬ 
lished 1692. 


THE COVENANTS WITH THE JEWS. 287 

an invalid is needful when he has acquired strength enough 
to walk alone. 

It is, however, of inestimable value to those who are at¬ 
tempting to lead others by the light of the arcana which it 
•contains, and to trace in it the history of the mystery which 
it has preserved, and which, so far as the race to whom it 
was confided is concerned, culminates in its first important 
stage with the two covenants which God made with them, 
and the terms of which are recorded in the 29th and 30th 
chapters of Deuteronomy. The curse attached to the first 
covenant contained in the 29th chapter was fulfilled after the 
crucifixion of Christ, when the second temple was destroyed 
•and the dispersion of the race among all the nations of the 
•earth was accomplished. For they did not recognise in the 
Jewish carpenter the fulfilment of the law. Therefore, when 
the tragedy was consummated, the law practically disappeared 
from outward observance. They had allowed the spirit to 
evaporate from the flask of which they were the guardians, 
.and the flask was taken from them, to be restored to them, 
according to their belief, when they are themselves restored 
to their own land; but this restoration can only take place 
npon condition that they fulfil the second covenant, which 
is contained in the 30th chapter. It is too late now to give 
them back the letter of their old law: in these enlight¬ 
ened days they would not know what to do with it if 
they had it. It is impossible to conceive the civilised Jew 
of the present day returning to Levitical observances, sacri¬ 
ficing lambs as trespass-offerings, and having some of the 
blood put upon the tip of his right ear, and some upon the 
thumb of his right hand, and some upon the great toe of his 
right foot, and so forth. Either they must be content to 
remain exiles, and practically abandon the law—which is, in 
fact, the one thing that makes them Jews—or they must 
recognise the fact that the law was a mere outward cere¬ 
monial, which only involved obligations so long as it con¬ 
tained a mystery, but that with the revelation of the mystery, 
the law and the obligations attached to it ceased to have any 
raison d'etre. But more than that: if the law and the obli¬ 
gations go, then so far as the Jews are concerned, the book 
must follow; and if the book goes, there will be nothing left 


288 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


of the Jew. Unless an inner meaning can be found for the 
book, and it is rescued from the attacks made on its literal 
and historical value, it must certainly perish as divine author¬ 
ity, from Christians no less than from Jews. 

Symptoms of uneasiness are already beginning to manifest 
themselves among the more intelligent Jews in this direction, 
as is evidenced by a recent article, which I regret is too long: 
to quote at length, but from which the following extract is- 
well worthy of reproduction. After discussing the effect of 
modern criticism upon the Biblical record, the writer, Mr 
Alfred Henriques, says: “ As to the effect of this new 
‘ learning upon Judaism, a few remarks will now be offered. 

4 It is proper to observe that the patriarchs are rejected as- 
4 entirely unhistoric characters, and are relegated to the region 
4 of myths and legends. If this destructive criticism can be 
‘ maintained, the miraculous call of Abraham and the promises- 
made to him must be abandoned. Doubtless these conclu- 
4 sions will greatly surprise pious Hebrews. The unhistoric 

* character of the Biblical account of the exodus, and of the 
4 tremendous events said to have taken place at Sinai, is, 

4 however, fatal to the claims of dogmatic Judaism. It has 
4 long been believed that the authorship of the Ten Command- 
4 ments has to be sought in Egypt, where the Book of the Dead 
‘ gives some remarkable parallelisms. These are the great 
4 questions on which Jewish thought has to be concentrated. 

4 In the present condition of Biblical criticism, it would be 
4 most unwise to form inflexible opinions or to assume un- 
4 changeable positions either favourable or antagonistic to the 
4 new learning. The object of the writer will be fully attained 
4 if he succeed in directing a very much larger share of public 
4 attention to questions which are vital to Jewish belief, and 
‘ which in the near future will imperatively press for solution. 

* They are questions which cannot profitably be set aside or 
4 ignored. The Hebrews are the people of the Book. By the 
4 Book dogmatic Judaism must stand or fall. It is needless 
4 to point to the immense antiquity of Judaism and to the 

* severe trials it has gone through. Antiquity in many aspects- 
4 is an element of weakness, not of strength. No danger that 
4 Judaism has ever escaped is as formidable as the present. 

* one. Judaism has in the past entered into contest with 


MODERN BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 


289 


‘ rival creeds, has overcome them all in solid argument; but 
‘ the approaching combat will be of a totally different kind, 
4 None of the old weapons will avail, none of the old argu- 
‘ ments will succeed, against an array of learning which the 

* world has never before equalled. The field of the combat 
‘ has also changed. It will not be a challenge of a doctrine 
‘ or of a text, or of the interpretation of a prophecy—it will be 

* a challenge as to the value of the records upon which all is 
‘ founded. If the Book be unhistoric and incapable of sustain- 

* ing the pretensions of dogmatic Judaism, pious Hebrews 
‘ need not be disheartened. The fundamental beliefs need no 
‘ historic records to validate them. A hew foundation must 

* be sought for the ancient faith, and it will no doubt be no 
‘ less potent to concentrate religious fervour, than that which 

* may be lost. For indeed, on the failure of dogmatic Judaism 

* to fulfil the intellectual needs and aspirations of the coming 

* generation, a new and more solid and also a more rational 

* basis may be found for the grand and simple faith, which, 

* rejuvenated by the infusion of modern knowledge, may still 
‘ continue to give comfort and solace to those of the ancient 

* race who cannot conscientiously sacrifice their reason or their 
‘ standard of historic truth in favour of records, however 
‘ ancient their origin or however beautiful their contents.” 1 

The foundation for the ancient faith which Mr Henriques 
seeks is not a new one, for it is to be found in the principle 
which sustains the universe, and in the revelation of the 
mystery contained in the law which Moses, who was without 
doubt an historical personage, gave to his people. It is 
none the worse for being in some measure derived from the 
Egyptian funereal ritual, for that also contained the mystery; 
but its presentation will discover features calculated to touch 
the race, to whom the lofty mission is offered of laying this 
foundation for all humanity, in its most sensitive point, and 
to offend prejudices so deeply rooted that the operation of the 
Divine Spirit can alone remove them. 

It is in the earnest hope that I may be guided by that same 
Spirit, that I now venture to approach this most profound and 
vital subject. 

1 The Jewish Chronicle, July 22, 1887, “ Modern Biblical Criticism.” Alfred 
Henriques. 

T 


290 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE MISSION OF THE JEWS — THE MYSTERY OF THE DIVINE FEMININE 
CONFIDED TO THEM—THE VISION OF ISAIAH—THE DIVINE FEMININE 
ENFOLDED IN CHRIST—THE METHOD OF HIS BIRTH—JEWISH BELIEF 
IN THE MESSIAH—THE VIRGIN MARY—NATURE OF THE DESCENT OF 
THE FEMININE PRINCIPLE—COVENANTS WITH THE JEWS—REASONS 
WHY THEY SHOULD RECOGNISE IN THIS PRINCIPLE THEIR MESSIAH. 

The life of a nation differs from the life of an individual in 
this, that the individual frequently escapes the results of his 
own misconduct in this world by passing away from it before 
the consequences, which must always, sooner or later, follow 
the infraction of divine laws, can overtake him ; but these con¬ 
sequences pursue him into the next phase of his existence, and 
he undergoes there the penalties they involve, from which he 
can only escape by his own efforts, and by going through that 
severe disciplinary process to which he refused to submit in 
mortal life. The nation, on the other hand, perishes in this 
world, by reason of its collective violation of those same laws. 
History testifies to the decay and final disappearance of one 
form of civilisation after another, and of the nations which 
represented them, by reason of the vices inherent in them, and 
the corruption which, in some instances slowly, and in others 
with greater rapidity, putrefied the whole social and political 
system. 

A special destiny was reserved, however, for the race which 
was intrusted with the guardianship of the Sacred Mystery; 
for the external form in which it was veiled, and which was 
called the law, was so framed as to ensure the tribal distinc¬ 
tiveness of its custodians, and thus endowed them with an 
element of cohesion which is lacking in other nations and 


JEWISH CONTUMACY. 


291 


the religions they profess. This developed a tenacity of race 
that has resisted the fiercest persecution—which, indeed, only 
had the effect of cementing it more strongly—and has tided 
it through epochs which witnessed the rise and fall of mighty 
empires. 

The history of all nations is a history of moral discipline, 
if they would but see it. Their wars and revolutions, their 
pestilences and famines, are all so many moral lessons to warn 
them against prominent national vices, and so to give them an 
opportunity of averting the judgment which the indulgence of 
those vices must inevitably entail. But the Jews alone were 
carefully instructed in this fact, and were privileged in pos¬ 
sessing a class of men who preached, and warned, and de¬ 
nounced incessantly,—a class of men of whom history con¬ 
tains no similar record, who were perpetually reminding their 
nation of its lofty mission, and prophesying the calamities it 
would bring upon itself if it proved unfaithful to it. The 
Jews alone recognised as a nation their sacred character, 
and gloried in it; calling themselves a people chosen by God, 
and pointing with pride to the covenants which they believed 
He had specially made with them, and to the infraction of 
which such fearful penalties were attached. 

But whilst conscious that this was so, they persisted with a 
singular infatuation in violating even the letter of their law; 
in allying themselves with the natives of the land which they 
had received as an inheritance, contrary to the divine com¬ 
mand ; in adopting the worship of their gods, and in manifest¬ 
ing their contumacy in many ways. 

Notwithstanding the severe affliction they underwent in 
their banishment to Babylon, and in the numerous hostile 
invasions to which their land was subjected, they remained 
stiff-necked to the last; their worship sank to a mere formalism, 
their conscience became deadened, and their spiritual percep¬ 
tions so utterly blunted, that, with the exception of a very 
small group of persons connected with a mystical sect who 
devoted themselves to the study of the internal meaning of 
the law, there were none among them who were sufficiently 
illuminated to perceive that the period of the fulfilment of the 
first covenant was at hand, and that the time had arrived 
when, if they did not apprehend its inner sense, they were to 


292 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


be “ rooted out of the land ” and “ cast into another land,” as 
it is this day. Yet, notwithstanding this, they were promised 
that the revelation of the mystery contained in the law should 
still remain their inheritance, for it is written in the following- 
verse : “ The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but 
those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our 
children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.” 1 

The reason that the history of the Jews contains a record 
of exceptional infidelity and backsliding, is because upon 
them was concentrated a terrific and sustained infernal 
attack. The powers of darkness well understood the lofti¬ 
ness of their mission if they themselves did not; the former 
knew the mystery contained in the law of which the latter 
were the guardians, and how it was to be fulfilled, and all 
their ingenuity was expended in blinding the eyes of the: 
Jews to its fulfilment, and in perverting their moral sense 
by tempting them to repeated infractions of the outward law,, 
with the view of destroying them utterly as a nation before 
it was fulfilled. In this they succeeded with nearly all the 
tribes ; while the minority, who remained faithful to it, have 
never to this day recognised its fulfilment. 

Not only did God treat them with infinite tenderness and. 
long-suffering, out of compassion to the exceptionally difficult 
position in which they had been placed, but He made another 
covenant with them containing a blessing, even as the former 
covenant contained a curse, compliance with which would 
ensure their return to their own land. “ If any of thy out- 
4 casts be in the utmost parts of heaven, from thence will the- 
‘ Lord thy God gather thee, and from thence will -He fetch 

* thee: and the Lord thy God will bring thee unto the land. 

* which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and 
‘ He will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers.” 2 

But this blessing is made conditional on the recognition of 
the “Word”; and the Word, they are told, is to be found in 
the heart of him who opens himself to its influence. “ It is not 
‘ hidden from thee, neither is it far off: it is not in heaven, that 

* thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring 
‘ it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it ? Neither is it beyond 
4 the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for 

1 Deuteronomy xxix. 29. 2 Deuteronomy xxx. 4, 5. 


THE FULFILMENT OF THE LAW. 


293 


4 us, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it ? But 

< the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy 

* heart, that thou mayest do it.” What this Word was, was 
at once recognised by some of those among the Essenes who 
had studied the mysteries, and were familiar with the divine 
Triad of Wisdom, Love, and Operation, and who could recog¬ 
nise the Word in that “Operation”; whether it took form 
in a law, or in a man, or in a mystery contained both in the 
law and in the man. Therefore, says Paul, who never saw 
Christ, but who perceived a part, but only a part, of the sense 
which is now fully to be revealed, in which Christ was the 
fulfilment of the law, “ For Christ is the end of the law for 

* righteousness to every one that believeth. For Moses de- 

< scribeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man 

< which doeth those things shall live by them. But the right- 

< eousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not 

* in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven ? (that is, to 
4 bring Christ down from above;) or, Who shall descend into 
4 the deep ? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.) 

* But what saitli it ? The word is nigh unto thee, even in 

* thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, 
‘ which we preach.” 1 

Now the mystery which the law contained was, I have al¬ 
ready said, the Divine Feminine principle, and the mystery in 
Christ was concealed in His androgynous nature. He was the 
second Adam in this, that He contained within Himself the 
Divine Feminine principle enfolded within His external mas¬ 
culine. Moses, however, could not have given the law, had he 
not contained the principle organically within his own atomic 
frame. This principle has never been absolutely and entirely 
withdrawn from earth, and a latent atomic connection has al¬ 
ways been maintained with human organisms, but only in very 
special cases has it been manifested. Of these the most re¬ 
markable Biblical instances were Melchizedek, Moses, Elijah, 
and John the Baptist. I do not include here the founders or 
sages of other religions, ip whom it was more or less developed, 
or Christ, who possessed another principle in addition to it. 
But the case most undoubtedly interesting to the Jews is that 
of Moses, of whom we are told that God “ buried him, and no 

1 Romans x. 4-8. 


294 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


man knows his sepulchre to this day.” This signifies that 
the altogether exceptional development of the principle in 
him, and which culminated in him during his retirement on 
Mount Sinai, was withdrawn from earth; as it was also in 
the case of Elijah, on the occasion of his withdrawal. The 
account, to which I have already alluded, of the dispute which 
took place over the body of Moses between Michael and 
Satan, was for the possession of these Divine Feminine organic 
elements. 

The fact that we never read of the death of those thus 
exceptionally favoured, implies a peculiar transference of 
atomic elements, under conditions which should protect them 
from infernal appropriation, for they contain potencies of 
which the Siddim were deprived by their rebellion, and 
which they have always desired to regain, in order that they 
might pervert them. Could they succeed in this, their victory 
over man would be assured. Hence it is that the potencies 
of the Divine Feminine have been so carefully guarded, and 
that Moses was not allowed to enter into Palestine, charged as 
he was with so large a measure of them, as they would have 
superinduced magnetic conditions in the country, too powerful 
for the people to bear. As it was, we owe the prophets, with 
their remarkable utterances, to this influence. There is a 
curious passage in the Talmud bearing upon this subject: 
“ Six months did the Shechinah (or Divine Feminine) hesitate 
‘ to depart from the midst of Israel in the wilderness, in hopes 
‘ that they would repent. At last, when they persisted in 
‘ impenitence, the Shechinah said, May their bones be blown; 

‘ as it is written, Job xi. 20, ‘ The eyes of the wicked shall fail, 

‘ they shall not escape, and their hope shall be as a puff of 
‘ breath.’ ” 1 The puff of breath is the false or infernal pneu¬ 
matic afflatus, as contradistinguished from the true and divine 
pneuma or breath. 

It was thus that the Divine Feminine was only allowed to 
enter the promised land in the person of Joshua and some of 
the priests, in whom it was tempered and suppressed, and only 
made itself manifest in certain persons,—as, for instance, in 
Samuel, whose birth was attended by circumstances somewhat 
similar to those of John the Baptist, and whose mother bore 

1 Rosh Hashanah, fol. xxxi., col. 1. 


THE VISION OF ISAIAH. 


295 


a child in her old age, because, we are told, “the Lord remem¬ 
bered her ”; and in the case of Isaiah, who received an in¬ 
spiration on the subject for a special purpose, which bears so 
directly on the present position of the Jews in regard to this 
important matter, that it is necessary to examine the inner 
meaning of the sixth chapter, which contains it. 

The prophet narrates a vision in which he saw the “ Lord 
sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train [or the 
skirts thereof] filled the temple.” The train or the skirts 
thereof signify the Shechinah. “Above it stood the sera¬ 
phim : each one had six wings; with twain he covered his 
face, with twain he covered his feet, with twain he did fly.” 
The first pair of wings signify “ adoration,” the second pair 
“ abasement,” and the third pair “ obedience.” “ And one 
cried unto another and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord 
of hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory.” The three 
holies apply to His threefold nature—to Jehovah, masculine 
and feminine combined, to El, masculine, and to Shaddai, 
feminine. The “glory” is the glory of the Shechinah. 

“ And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that 
cried, and the house was filled with smoke,” signifies the 
physical and psychical effects of the Divine Feminine upon 
nature. 

“ Then said I, Woe is me ! for I am undone ; because I am 
‘ a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of 

* unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of 
‘ hosts.” This signifies the seer’s consciousness of his impurity, 
in the absence of the Divine Feminine principle in his organism. 

The “Lord of hosts,” signifies the divine male generative 
principle. (See chapter quoted from the Kabbalah in the 
Appendix.) 

“ Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live 
4 coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from 
‘ off the altar; and he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, 
‘ this hath touched thy lips ; and thine iniquity is taken 
‘ away, and thy sin purged,” signifies the atomic contact of 
the Divine Feminine with the organism of the seer. 

“ Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I 

* send, and who will go for us ? Then said I, Here am I; 
4 send me. And He said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye 


296 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


* indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive 
4 not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears 
4 heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, 
4 and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, 
4 and convert, and be healed.” This signifies the impossibility 
of conveying to the Jewish race at that time any conception 
of the Divine Feminine. 

“ Then said I, Lord, how long ? And He answered, Until 
4 the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses 
< without man, and the land be utterly desolate, and the 
4 Lord have removed men far away, and there be a great for- 
4 saking in the midst of the land,” signifies the desolation 
which was to overtake Palestine, and the dispersion of its 
race, before the knowledge of the Divine Feminine should be 
conveyed to them. 

“ And yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and 
4 shall be eaten: as a teil-tree, and as an oak, whose substance 
4 is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed 
4 shall be the substance thereof,” signifies that the principle 
shall be preserved in Palestine, and shall form the sustenance 
of those who accept Him who sowed its sacred seed in that 
holy land by His death, and of those also, who, if they are 
unable to accept Christ in His first advent, will open them¬ 
selves to the reception of the Divine Feminine. 

I may here note incidentally, in illustration of the degree 
of sanity which characterises the religious instinct of the 
present day, that if any man now was to say that he had 
seen such a vision as the one above narrated, or indeed such 
as any of those recorded by the prophets, he would instantly 
be put into a lunatic asylum. The lapse of a certain number 
of years makes divine revelation at one time what would be 
madness at another. What is divine revelation, and what 
insanity, is left to be determined by the clerical and medical 
professions, who have in this nineteenth century compounded 
between them the strangest jumble of childish superstition 
si d ignorant scepticism which the world has ever seen. It is 
to their guardianship, assisted by courts of so-called justice, 
that the consciences and the liberties of unfortunate human 
beings are confided. 

The fulfilment of the law, then, consisted in the advent to 


THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST. 


297 


earth of a Being atomically bisexually constructed, whose 
nativity took place under circumstances which ensured His 
complete union, through the operation of the Divine Feminine, 
with His own feminine complement. 

Christ thus approached, as nearly as external conditions 
admitted, the primitive man, and in this sense was a second 
Adam. This completion of His twofold nature, however, did 
not take place until He ascended out of the water, after being 
baptised by John the Baptist, when we have it recorded that 
the spirit, or pneuma, descended upon Him in the form of 
a dove. This was the outward symbol of His own feminine 
complement, and in recognition thereof there was heard a 
voice from heaven saying, “ This is my beloved Son, in whom 
I am well pleased.” 

It will be explained later how John was specially prepared 
atomically by the circumstances of his birth, for the import¬ 
ant function he was called upon to perform, which was to 
impart a special pneumatic element contained in his organ¬ 
ism, to that of Christ—the outward and visible sign of the 
interior contact thus established, being figured by the rite 
cf baptism. This was, in fact, a baptism of the Holy Spirit 
and of fire. 

The real signification of baptism consists in its typification 
cf the descent of the Divine Feminine; for water was an 
emblem of that principle. Thus Aima, the Supernal Mother, 
who is eternally conjoined with Ab, the- Great Father, is 
sometimes called “ The Great Sea,” and to her are attributed 
the divine names, Elohim and Jehovah Elohim. 1 This rite 
had been understood and practised by the Jewish sect of 
Essenes, to which John the Baptist belonged, and by other 
sects which had preceded it, from ancient times; but its 
signification was soon lost in the early Christian Church, 
though certain of the apostles, who had been instructed in 
the hidden mystery by Christ, understood, when they were 
commanded to baptise in the name of the holy pneuma or 
JRuach , that this spirit was the feminine principle of God, as 
the feminine Hebrew word Ruacli implies. In this sense, 
baptism typified the regenerating influence of the Divine 
Feminine principle in man, though the Church soon con- 
1 Mather’s Kabbalah, p. 25. 


. 298 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


verted it into a mere formal ceremony, by means of which 
man was to be saved from eternal torment in hell-fire. 

It is not to be wondered at that the Jews failed to recog¬ 
nise their Messiah in Christ, for it involved the belief in a 
double Messianic advent, which is nowhere clearly prophesied! 
in the Old Testament, excepting to those who could interpret- 
the hidden meaning of the visions and predictions of its- 
seers. The necessity for the first Messiah was to sow the 
seed of the Divine Feminine, the harvest of which the second 
Messiah, whose approach is now at hand, was to reap. But 
as real belief cannot be acquired by an intellectual effort, but 
descends by inspiration to the affections, a belief in the first 
Messiah is not necessary to those who desire to form the 
first-fruits of that harvest. When once such persons, of 
whatever race or religion, have prepared themselves by the 
necessary discipline, to receive the Divine Feminine into their 
organisms, their subsurface faculties will be opened to the 
apprehension of all mysteries appertaining to the proper 
exercise of the new forces which will descend upon them, 
for the more perfect service of God, their race, and of 
humanity at large. The Jews will not be judged because 
they failed altogether to apprehend the nature and mission 
of the first Messiah; but let them beware how they turn 
their backs upon the second, who now invites them to> 
receive Him atomically in the inmost recesses of the organ¬ 
ism, in His twofold nature—as Bride and Bridegroom, as 
King and Queen. 

Here I must refer to the belief of certain initiates among 
the kabbalistic Jews in regard to the Messiah. As a rule, 
the sentiment of the nation at large upon this point is very 
vague, and based upon divers renderings of Talmudic tradi¬ 
tions, while some among the more advanced of Western Jews, 
who, however, are still called by that name, go so far as to 
repudiate any anticipation of a Messiah at all. But the 
mystical, oriental, ultra-orthodox Jew, who is profoundly 
versed in the Kabbalah, entertains secret views in regard 
to its meaning of which his co-religionists know nothing; 
and he, although disbelieving most profoundly in the Mes¬ 
sianic character of Christ, whom he holds in horror, does 
nevertheless believe that the tetragrammation contains the 


THE MYSTERY OF THE JUBILEE. 


299“ % 


Messianic mystery. Now, the tetragrammation consists of 
the four letters which compose the name of Jehovah, IHYH 
—or Yod (masculine), He (feminine), Yau (masculine), He- 
(feminine). These possess a gr^t variety of significations, 
according to the order in which they are placed, while the- 
word itself is too holy to be pronounced; nor is it supposed 
that any, except a few initiated, know the sacred pronuncia¬ 
tion. Read in their proper order, they signify kabbalistically,. 
Yod, the Father; He, the Mother; Van, the Son; and He, the- 
Bride—that is, the Bride of the Son, with whom He is eter¬ 
nally and androgynously united (see Appendix). Therefore- 
the Kabbalists to this day accept the belief of the ancient 
rabbis, that the Messianic advent will be the descent of the 
Divine Feminine, as it is written in the Book of the Greater 
Holy Assembly: “And in the days of King Messiah there shall 
‘ be no need that one should teach another; for that one Spirit,. 

* who in Herself includeth all spirits, knoweth all wisdom and 
‘ understanding, counsel and might, and is the spirit of science- 

* and of the fear of the Lord; because She is the Spirit compre- 
‘ hending all spirits.” 1 And again, in the ‘Book of Concealed 
Mystery,’ where the “ horn ” mentioned in the Old Testament 
is interpreted as meaning “ influx from the Mother,” as in the 
132d Psalm, 17th verse: “ * There shall the horn of David 
flourish ’—that is, the Queen (the Bride of the Son) shall re¬ 
ceive influx from the Mother; ” and again, in paragraphs 41,. 
42: “ For it is written, Josh. vi. 5, ‘And it shall be when the 
‘ horn of jubilee is sounded.’ This is the splendour of the 
‘ jubilee, and the truth (path) is crowned by the Mother (that 
‘ is), the horn which receiveth the horn and the spirit, that it, 
« may restore the spirit of Yod He unto Yod He (that is, when 

* the spirit is to be given to the Son, His Mother contributed 
‘ as much—which is the horn, the brilliancy—as the increase- 
‘ which He receiveth from the Father). And this is the horn 
‘ of jubilee, . . . and He (fern.) is the spirit rushing forth, 

* over all (because the Mother is the world to come, when in 
‘ the resurrection all things will receive the spirit), and all 
‘ things shall return into their place (like as in the jubilee, so- 
‘ in the world to come).” 2 

The jubilee here alluded to corresponds to the millennium, 
1 Mather's Kabbalah, p. 133. 2 Ibid., p. 107. 


300 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


-of the Christians. The whole of these obscure and mystical 
writings, which are replete with the most profound inspira¬ 
tion, though they are altogether repudiated by Western Jews 
as possessing any authority, are full of arcana containing the 
mystery of both the first and second advents of the Son and 
the Bride, contained in the last two letters of the tetragram- 
mation, which are concealed from the most learned Kabbal- 
ists in the absence of the key furnished by the first advent. 
The fact, however, that they understand what the nature of 
the approaching Messianic advent is to be, places them in a 
far more favourable position for the reception of the Bride 
•and Bridegroom, than their advanced and civilised co-religion¬ 
ists of Western countries, who ignore it. 

Nevertheless, though the Jews of every shade of opinion 
may refuse to accept our explanation, we must, for the sake 
of Christians, return to the details of Christ’s appearance upon 
■earth, in order to show how the Messianic advent, which so 
many of them are looking for, has become possible. 

Upon the completion of His bisexual nature, through atomic 
•contact with John the Baptist, Christ retired for forty days 
into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. In the inter¬ 
nal meaning contained in the record that has been given us 
of His temptations,—which was, in fact, His own description 
of them to His disciples,—we have conveyed to us a summary 
of the nature of the trials, temptations, and ordeals through 
which every man and woman will have to pass, who receives 
the bisexual life which is now descending upon the world, 
whereby we are entering the path which is leading us back to 
an approximate image of our Maker. 

It was a dim perception of the Godlike nature that Christ 
had thus acquired, which caused His deification by His 
•apostles, and in the religion which they founded; but though 
His actual nature differed from ours in this respect, and also 
in respect of His origin, it did not make Him God, except in 
the sense that any man who can embody this Divine Feminine 
principle can become absorbed in God. 

The profound significance of Christ’s mission on earth, con¬ 
sists in the fact that it is through Him that the channel for it 
is provided. In order to explain this, I must again revert to 
the atomic structure of the universe, and of all that it contains. 


THE ATOMIC ACCRETION. 


301 


I should be considered a lunatic if I ventured to assert the- 
possibility of a man coming into the world otherwise than by 
the ordinary process of procreation, or of his passing away 
from it otherwise than by the ordinary process of corruption,, 
were it’not fortunately the case that this is admitted, or pro¬ 
fessed to be admitted, by all who call themselves Christians- 
What they would deny is that this should be possible without 
violating any law of nature. Now, not only is this perfectly 
possible under natural law, but the day is not so very far 
distant, when the organic changes, which are now in their 
incipient stage, will have reached such a point that this- 
possibility will be made manifest. I have already described 
how the human organism became as it were locked up by 
a winter frost, which set in to arrest its control in its fluid 
condition, by the lower region of the previous orb. Since 
that time it has strained against its icy fetters, unable to free 
itself from the bondage of incrustation of gross atomic sub¬ 
stance, and enthralled by the limitations of surface sensuous 
perceptions. This is what Paul means when he says, “For 
‘ we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in 
‘ pain until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which 

* have the first-fruits of the Spirit [or the Divine Feminine],. 
‘ even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the 

* adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body,”—which can 
only be achieved by its operation. 

But the thaw is setting in, the atomic incrustation is 
becoming attenuated, witness the phenomena of hypnotism, 
telepathy, spiritualism, and those attendant upon various 
phases of what are called “ nervous ” maladies. The effect of 
this is to bring about great variations in the conditions under 
which atomic force manifests itself in the human organism. 
I have already described the three methods of contact be¬ 
tween the visible and invisible worlds, and will presently 
enter with more detail into the process by means of wlych 
this force acts, through pneumatic-atomic interlocking, and 
thus imparts a new vitality to our frames, and a new potency 
to our faculties. It is to this change that Paul alludes when 
he says, “for the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth 
for the manifestation of the sons <> fod.” This manifestation 
of the sons of God will enable t .oe more to unite them- 


302 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


•selves with the daughters of men, as they did in old time, 
•and once more visitants from the nether sphere will appear 
•on earth, and it will become the arena of the conflict at which 
I hinted in the introductory chapter, and those who will 
•engage in it are thus described in the Eevelation: “For they 
* are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth 
‘ unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to 
‘ gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. 
'* Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and 
‘ keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his 
‘ shame. And he gathered them together into a place called 
‘ in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.” 

How it is quite within the bounds of possibility that this 
•atomic change for which the world is being gradually pre¬ 
pared, may have taken place under very exceptional circum¬ 
stances, and in a single instance, nearly nineteen hundred 
years ago; for there is scarcely a law in nature that is not 
subject to irregularity and variation, and this is especially true 
•of the laws which govern the will and the emotions in their 
relation to the reproduction of life. 

In order to apprehend this, it is necessary to understand 
that the propagation of every human soul into the visible 
part of our universe, is preceded by its generation into that 
which is invisible. As by death we are born again from this 
world into the other, so by birth here we die out of the other, 
after having been generated into it from the Infinite Source of 
all, by the interaction of successive male and female atomic 
•elements, through a long series of beings, as a vital spark or 
soul-germ, which is finally let down into human organisms, 
there to receive from the earthly parents an atomic overlay, 
derived more or less from their physical and moral natures, 
but still retaining its own essential characteristics as to atomic 
sensibility and capacity for recombination. The moral and 
intellectual condition of a being born into this world depends 
not so much on its human parents, from whom it has derived 
its fleshly covering and many of its hereditary characteristics 
and resemblances, as upon its more immediate invisible pro¬ 
genitors, who are usually in blood affinity with its parents, 
and who by similarity of moral constitution and temperament 
are atomically allied with them. It is for this reason we often 


SO-CALLED MIRACULOUS BIRTH. 


303 


find that after three or four generations even physical resem¬ 
blances will be reproduced. It is perfectly possible, therefore, 
for a child to be born here, whose immediate invisible pro¬ 
genitors were exceptionally gifted with the faculty of endowing 
a soul-germ with a peculiar receptivity to atomic combinations, 
which should render it sensitive to direct special operation 
upon its organism, and this receptivity might be still further 
developed by growth and cultivation. 

It is thus that mediums appear every now and then capable 
of achieving, the most phenomenal results—by no effort of 
their own, but simply because their atomic elements are so 
constituted that they can be invaded by those of invisible 
beings, who, in cases of materialisation, literally clothe them¬ 
selves externally with those elements. The bodies thus formed 
are composed of materials drawn from the grosser atoms of 
physical nature; but in such cases the contact is made by 
surface adhesion, not by internal combinations. 

Where, however, a soul-germ is projected into the world 
by progenitors who have attained lofty spiritual conditions, 
through natural parents who have also been especially pre¬ 
pared by moral training and previous insemination of vital 
currents from a pure source, that soul-germ would, upon being 
let down into them, in its turn develop into a mortal excep¬ 
tionally endowed with atomic sensitiveness and receptivity 
to vital forces directed from the beings to whom it owed its 
origin in the invisible world, and with whom an interior 
atomic combination would be effected. 

This was the case with the Virgin Mary, and thus it was 
that a soul-germ was projected into her organism by invisible 
agency, and clothed upon with fleshly particles without the 
aid of human instrumentality. Buddhists in the same way 
maintain that Gautama was born of a virgin. 

It follows as a matter of course that the atomic structure 
•of a child born under these conditions differs from that of 
ordinary men. It was open to the in-flowing of energies 
from the invisible world, and possessed a capacity for their 
•distribution and radiation which resulted in those pheno¬ 
mena called “ miraculous,” by the aid of which the sick were 
bealed, the elements dominated, material substance indefinite¬ 
ly increased, natural life restored, and invisible transference 


304 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


effected from one locality to another; and it further follows 
that the process of translation from this'world was also- 
attended with different atomic conditions, from whence 
resulted the phenomena which succeeded the crucifixion of 
Christ, and the death of His natural body, but not its corrup¬ 
tion in the usual course of nature. 

The fact that it was only through the descent of the Divine 
Feminine principle into the organism of the Virgin, that it 
could become enfolded into that of her babe, invests her 
with a character of peculiar sanctity, and with spiritual 
functions, having reference to this world, of a very high 
order. It is due to a sort of dumb consciousness of this fact* 
that she occupies such a prominent position in the worship 
of the Greek and Roman Churches, and which, in the latter, 
has found expression in the dogma of the Immaculate Con¬ 
ception. She is the atomic link between the invisible pro¬ 
genitor and the “ Son of man ”—so called because the source 
of His being had been Himself a man. She now presides- 
with Him over that divine descent into the world which first 
touched her organism; and is worthy of all the worship and 
adoration which she receives at the hands of those who have 
exalted her into her rightful position of an intermediary, 
but who wrongly style her the Mother of God. The peculiar- 
relation which she bears to Christ, is a mystery which can 
only be apprehended by those who have received into their 
organisms that most sacred principle which she represents, 
and against which the prejudices of what is called Protestant 
Christendom, have erected a serious barrier. Nevertheless, 
those who honour the Virgin Mary, and invoke the potencies- 
of . that life which she imparted to her Son, will progress far 
more rapidly in bisexual life than those who do not. 

This explanation of the functions of the Virgin, and the birth 
of Christ, is not derived from any preconceived idea, based on 
the Biblical statement that He had no natural father; for 
until I began to write this account of His birth, I did not 
believe that statement, it never having been shown to me be¬ 
fore that it was a true one. I feel therefore impelled to make- 
it against my preconceptions in the matter; but as I do so, the 
certainty arises in my mind that Christ was thus exception¬ 
ally born into the world, in order that a contact of a new 


THE DISTRIBUTION OF CHRIST’S ELEMENTS. 305 

kind might be established between Him and the inhabitants 
of those regions, who form an atomic chain which finally at¬ 
taches itself to the Almighty. He thus, in conjunction with 
the Virgin, becomes the essential connecting-link between all 
human beings, and the universal Father and Mother; and 
there is no phrase which more accurately expresses His inter¬ 
mediate position than that which is used when prayers are 
offered “through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Thus He is the 
mediator or intermediary between God and man; and thus 
so many of those texts with which the Hew Testament teems, 
and from which the false doctrine has been coined that He 
was a blood-offering and a sacrifice for guilty man to appease 
an angry God, receive their literal and exact application. In 
one sense He was a blood-offering and a sacrifice, but not in 
the sense usually received, but in one quite different. It was 
necessary that He should shed His blood, not to appease an 
angry God, but in order to distribute into nature the atomic 
elements of the Divine Feminine with which He was charged. 
Therefore He said, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a 
corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: 
but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” 

The atoms of that blood, and of that fleshly covering, which 
passed into nature, were like a drop of some potent medi¬ 
cine infused into the decaying structure of the world's 
vitality. Ever since it has been silently imparting its 
health-giving vigours. It is true there has been a long 
period of apparent religious stagnation since that sublime 
event, but it has only been apparent. The seed seemed 
dead, but it was all the time germinating; and the energies 
had been slowly storing themselves in preparation for a 
great crisis foretold by Him in the words: “How is the 

* judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world 
‘ be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will 

* draw all men unto me.” For this purpose He needed to be 
born into the earth through a natural woman, and to die, and 
be lifted up from it, because He could only thus acquire an 
atomic construction which would enable Him to come into 
close affinity with man, and so draw all men unto Him. 
There is no other being in that world, constituted as to His 
organic elements with reference to ours as He is; and hence 


306 


SCIENTIFIC .RELIGION. 


He is our Saviour, to whom alone we must cling, and through 
whom alone we can draw the vital currents which will im¬ 
part the potency necessary for the salvation of the race. 

But while this applies to Christians, who are thus excep¬ 
tionally favoured in that they can invoke Christ, with a full 
understanding of their reason for doing so, it does not exclude 
those who have no intellectual appreciation of, or belief in, it. 
A method has been provided, in the infinite love of God, by 
which the Divine Feminine principle can descend, through 
Christ, to all who love the neighbour better than themselves, 
and are ready to give themselves for humanity—whether 
they be Materialists, Agnostics, Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, or 
of any other religion, or form of philosophy or superstition. 

There were two reasons why what seems to us so long an 
interval should elapse between Christ’s sacrifice of Himself, 
and His return in the plenitude of His might, to accomplish, 
through the organisms of those who yield themselves to Him, 
the work which He had begun. One was, that it has taken 
all these years for the seed which He sowed in the world, 
through His body and blood, to germinate. The other is, 
that it has taken all these years before a sufficiently powerful 
pneumatic battery could be charged, and an atomic chain could 
be prepared out of the organisms of those who have passed into 
the invisible world in the faith and love of Christ, to transmit 
the forces which are necessary for the world’s redemption. 
This vital energy had to be stored both here and there. It is 
through the chain thus formed that we reach Christ, and that 
He reaches us; and it is through atomic sympathy, by means 
of the energies stored here, that those who feel the truth of 
what is here written, will be attracted to each other. As 
soon as the earthly battery is powerful enough to draw down 
the life which is waiting to be poured out upon us, those 
which have been hidden from us by death hitherto will be 
made manifest. This is “the manifestation of the sons of 
God,” and when the atomic combinations are complete be¬ 
tween ourselves and those which have gone before, “then 
‘ we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together 

* with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so 

* shall we ever be with the Lord.” This does not, of course, 
mean a literal ascension in our present bodies, but an atomic 


THE SECOND COVENANT. 


307 


modification of them, which will altogether alter our relations 
to matter in its existing form, and enable us to exercise the 
same powers, which are not unknown to fakirs in the East 
and mediums in the West, though it will be under conditions 
altogether different from those which operate in their case, 
and enable us to unite ourselves with those who are in ap¬ 
proximately like condition with ourselves. 

Then we shall be able to bear, what it is not possible for 
us to bear now, a more direct contact with Him who will 
return in glory to lead this great redemptive movement, and 
be our leader in the great battle which is impending. This is 
what is called by theologians “ the second coming of Christ,” 
and it is in anticipation of this event, now not far distant, 
that we are called upon to engage without delay in the work 
of preparation. For even now He begins, by a process pres¬ 
ently to be explained, to steal into the hearts of each one of 
us; silently, but surely, to those who open themselves to 
Him. Therefore He says, — “ Behold, I come as a thief; 
blessed is he that watcheth.” 

The reason that this warning, while it applies with the 
utmost force to all of us, should be especially heeded by Jew^, 
is because they, as the custodians of the mysteries contained 
in Christ and in their law, are called upon to lead into the 
world the full revelation of them; and because failure to do 
so will bring upon them the judgment pronounced in the 
second covenant. For what is the doom attached to the 
non-fulfilment of their part of this covenant ? “ But if thine 
4 heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but shalt be 
4 drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them; I 
4 denounce unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish, and 
‘ that ye shall not prolong your days upon the land whither 
4 thou passest over Jordan to possess it.” The gods here 
spoken of are not the gods of other religions, which have 
long since lost all attractions for the Jews; but the great 
god Mammon, whom they have worshipped more devoutly 
and more successfully than the people of any other race do; 
to such an extent, that the wealthy, civilised, and intel¬ 
lectually cultured Jew has not only lost all patriotic senti¬ 
ment in regard to the land of his forefathers, but shrinks 
with dismay from the prospect of the coming of that Messiah 


308 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


whom he expects, and from the sacrifices and obligations 
which the advent of the Prince of Peace would involve. 
Such are they who desire only to be left to wallow amid the 
flesh-pots of Egypt; and any Moses who should arise and bid 
them to follow him to the desert of personal suffering, disci¬ 
pline, and self-sacrifice, as a needful preparation for entering 
the promised land and welcoming their King, would be 
rejected as a fanatic, and denounced as a traitor to that 
golden calf which they have set up as their god, and which 
they so diligently worship. 

It is most likely, if this appeal finds a response in any 
Jewish heart, it will be rather amongst those who pray for 
the reunion of the Jehovah with the Shechinah, than among 
those who have lost all interest in the inner meaning con¬ 
tained in the law, who are rapidly abandoning even its letter, 
and who can regard with composure the disappearance of the 
Book itself, and the prospect of “ a new and more solid and 
more rational basis ” than the Book affords, “ for the grand 
and simple faith ” of their forefathers. 

But the Book itself, when rightly understood, affords this 
new and solid and rational basis. Unfortunately it is a basis 
which can only be built upon by those who are not utterly 
blinded by prejudice. For, in the words of one of your own 
prophets, “ the Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of 
* deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes: the prophets and 
‘ your rulers, the seers hath He covered. And the vision of all 
‘ is become unto you as a book that is sealed, which men 
‘ deliver to one that is learned, saying, Bead this, I pray thee: 
‘ and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed .” 1 And yet, if the 
eyes of your inner understanding could be opened, and you 
could as a race adopt the view of the descent of the Divine 
Feminine here set forth, you would be the direct means in 
Gods hands of overturning every Church in Christendom; 
for that view is as much opposed to their theology and to 
their prejudices as it is to yours, and the first achievement 
of those of your people who can see in Christ the channel 
for it, will be the destruction of that so-called Christian 
creed which has for so many centuries persecuted you in 
His name. 


l Isaiah xxix. 10. 


THE KABBALAH. 


309 


For tlie benefit of those oriental Jews who still accept the 
Kabbalah as authoritative, I will here insert a fragment of 
its teaching on the subject of the nature and operation of the 
Divine Feminine:— 

“ Come and behold! When the Most Holy Ancient One, 

* the Concealed of all Concealments, desired to be formed 

* forth, He conformed all things under the form of Male and 

* Female; and in such place wherein Male and Female are 

* comprehended. 

‘ For they could not permanently exist save in another 

* aspect of Male and Female (their countenances being joined 

< together). 

4 And this wisdom, embracing all things when it goeth 

< forth and shineth forth from the Most Holy Ancient One, 

* shineth not save under the form of Male and Female. 

‘ Therefore is this wisdom extended, and it is found that 
‘ it equally becometh Male and Female. Chokmah Ab Bin ah 
4 Am. Chokmah is the Father, and Binah is the Mother; 

* and therein are Chokmah, wisdom, and Binah, understand- 

* ing, counterbalanced in perfect equality of Male and Female. 

* And therefore are all things established in the equality of 
‘ Male and Female; for were it not so, how could they sub¬ 
sist? 1 This beginning is the Father of all things—the 
4 Father of all fathers; and both are mutually bound together, 
‘ and the one path shineth unto the other—Chokmah, wisdom, 
4 as the Father; Binah, understanding, as the Mother. 

‘ It is written, Prov. ii. 3, ‘If thou callest Binah, the 
‘ Mother.’ 

‘ When they associated together they generate, and are 

* expanded into truth. 

‘ In the teaching of the school of Rav Yeyeva, the Elder, it 

< is thus taught: ‘What is Bineh, the Mother of understand- 
‘ ing ? ’ Truly when they are associated together. 

‘ Assuredly Yod, I, impregnateth the letter He, H, and 

* produceth a Son, and She Herself bringeth Him forth. 

‘ But they both are found to be the perfection of all things 

* when they are associated together, and when the soul is in 

* them, the Syntagma of all things findeth place. 

1 Here is authority derived from the most ancient tradition for “woman’s 
rights.” 


310 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


‘For in their conformations are they found to be the 
‘perfections of all things — Father and Mother, Son and 
‘ Daughter. 

‘ These things have not been revealed save unto the Holy 
‘ Superiors, who have entered therein and departed there- 

* from, and have known the paths of the Most Holy God 
‘ (may He be blessed), so that they have not erred in them, 

‘ either on the right hand or on the left.” 1 

There are two reasons why this lofty mission has been in 
the first instance offered to the Jews. The first is, because 
Christ was a Jew, and He is thus enabled to occupy an excep¬ 
tional relation to His own race by reason of atomic affinity, ^ 
even though they may not consciously accept Him. This 
exists to a greater or less degree among all nations and 
races, but among none to the same extent that it does among 
the Jews. Therefore it is, that it has been imposed upon 
them to keep themselves exclusively apart, so that their blood 
might not be tainted with intermarriage, and that this inter¬ 
nal structural condition might be maintained, by which they 
could be interiorly and atomically united with the channel 
for the Messianic descent of the Divine Feminine, and 
could therefore be acted upon by Christ with a more direct 
potency and energy than those who are not of His own blood. 
And the second reason is, because the law not only contains 
the mystery of His bisexual nature, by means of which this 
potency can be brought to bear, but it also contains the whole 
method of the construction of Messianic society upon a theo¬ 
cratic basis, differing from anything that the world has ever 
seen, and which will contain within itself the solution of all 
those social and political problems which have distracted the 
civilisation of the nineteenth century, and which threaten 
now to overturn it. 

Therefore it was prophesied that the day should come when 
ten men should “take hold out of all languages of the nations, 

‘ even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, 

‘ We will go with you; for we have heard that Elohim is 

* with you.” 2 3 

1 Mather’s Kabbalah, chap. viii. of the ‘ Book of the Lesser Holy Assembly/ 

p. 281 —“ Concerning the Father and Mother in special.” 

3 Zechariab. viii. 23. 


RECONSTRUCTED SOCIETY. 


311 


The task of the reconstruction of this new society will be 
committed to the Jews, to be built up by them in conform¬ 
ity with the instructions concealed in the hidden meaning 
of their law, for it is thus, and thus only, that the temple 
can ever be rebuilt in Zion, and thus, and thus only, that 
the words of the prophet Isaiah can be fulfilled, “ that the 
‘ mountain of Jehovah’s house shall be established in the 
f top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; 
4 and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall 

* go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of 
‘Jehovah, to the house of Elohim of Jacob; and He will 

* teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths: for 
‘ out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of Jeho- 
‘ vah from Jerusalem.” 1 

The Book of Ezekiel is full of prophecy regarding Israel’s 
restoration, and the visions, from the fortieth chapter to the 
end especially, contain arcana, concealing under the figure of 
the rebuilding of the temple, instructions for the rearing of a 
social structure upon a divine model, which shall be theocratic 
in its form, hierarchic in its constitution, and co-operative in 
its organisation. 

The modern Jew can expect no literal fulfilment of this 
mystical symbolism. He must either accept some such in¬ 
terpretation as is here offered, or discover another, and this 
I am not aware of his having yet attempted to do. It will 
not do for him to sit down apathetically and wait for some 
unknown fulfilment, for in that case he will never recognise it 
when it comes. It is only by ardent and disinterested service 
of God and the' neighbour, that his eyes can be opened, and 
his ears quickened, and his heart softened. 

Excepting among the more “advanced” section of Western 
Jews, the advent of the Messiah is still universally believed 
in by the nation; and although I have explained in this 
chapter, that those who apprehend what I believe to have been 
the true nature of the work of Christ on earth, will see in it 
the preparation for His second coming, I repeat that it is 
not necessary that Jews who desire to receive an inflow of 
Messianic or Divine Feminine life now, should begin by doing 
violence to their prejudices, and accept the view of Christ’s 
1 Isaiah ii. 2, 3. 


312 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


work which has here been set forth. What is above all things 
necessary is, that they should recognise the feminine element 
in the Messiah whom they expect; that they should divert 
their gaze from the angry vindictive Father, upon whom it has 
been so long riveted, to the tender loving Mother, the mystery 
of whose nature was concealed in the Shechinah, and of whose 
secret presence among men, they have been the ancient and 
unconscious guardians. It is in Her outstretched arms that 
they will find their Messiah; and if, when the revelation is 
made of His twofold presence among them, they are unable to 
recognise in it the human form whom we call Christ, He will 
still remain Christ to us, while to them He will appear as 
the long-looked-for conqueror, and their deliverer from the 
social and spiritual bondage from which they have so long 
suffered. 

Although these prophecies seem sure, they cannot override 
the free-will of those concerning whom they are made; for 
there are others equally explicit, foreshadowing the judgment 
which will follow non-compliance with the covenant, which 
only made these blessings conditional on its fulfilment. It is 
expressly stated, in the event of unfaithfulness to this trust, 
“I denounce to you this day, that ye shall surely perish.” 
And this consummation must inevitably follow upon the 
abandonment of the Book, and the adoption instead of that 
“ new and more solid and more rational basis ” for the “ grand 
old simple faith,” when it is “ rejuvenated by the infusion of 
moral knowledge,” as proposed by the writer of the article 
already quoted. I have shown what the value of modern 
learning in matters of religion amounts to, and it would 
be difficult to imagine a greater act of sacrilege than that 
of supplanting the Book by the ‘Origin of Species’ or the 
‘Descent of Man.’ This is being drawn away and wor¬ 
shipping other gods, and serving them with a vengeance. 
As surely as this is done, must the race perish, for there 
will be nothing left to hold it together. The law will van¬ 
ish with the Book, and the children of Abraham will take 
unto themselves wives from the women of the lands in which 
they dwell, and be lost for ever in the society which they 
have helped to corrupt. 


THE ALTERNATIVE. 


313 


If the Book be abandoned, the law spurned, and its fulfil¬ 
ment denied, there is no way by which this fate can be averted. 
Nor can the Book be retained, the law preserved, and its 
fulfilment accomplished, excepting as here set forth. " I call 
14 heaven and earth to record this day against you, that 1 have 
x set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore 
* choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.” 


314 


CHAPTER XIX. 

THE TRUE POSITION OF WOMAN—THE FALSE POSITION ASSIGNED HER. 
BY CIVILISATION—HER NEW FUNCTIONS IN LIFE—THE DESCENT OF 
THE DIVINE FEMININE THROUGH HER—THE CO-OPERATIVE STRUGGLE: 
OF THE SEXES FOR PURITY—WOMAN’S RIGHTS—THE TRUE HIGHER 
EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 

Although the Jews may thus be intimately associated with 
the great scheme of the elevation of humanity to new and 
higher conditions, it need scarcely be said that it in no way 
depends upon them, and that it is they, and not the world,, 
that will suffer by their not co-operating in it. 

The earth received an electric shock when contact was es¬ 
tablished with the battery of the Divine Femininity, by the 
death of Christ upon it; and it is in no human power to- 
impede the storage of that transcendent energy which has- 
ever since been transmitted, or to hinder its ultimate mani¬ 
festation. 

It is to this manifestation that Christ alluded so fre¬ 
quently to His disciples, though they did not perceive the 
interior meaning; as, for instance, when He explained to them 
the parable of the tares and wheat. And this is “ the good 
seed,” of which He spoke, when He said, “ He that soweth 
the good seed is the Son of man; ” and this is the “ kingdom 
of heaven ” which He likened to “ treasure hid in a field, the 
which when a man hath found he hideth, and for joy thereof 
goeth and selleth all that he hath and buyeth that field ; ” and 
to “ a pearl of great price; ” and to “ a net that was cast into 
the sea; ” and to “ a grain of mustard-seed, which, when it is- 
1 sown, it groweth up, and becoineth greater than all herbs 
* and shooteth out great branches; so that the fowls of the air 


THE POSITION OF WOMAN. 


315 


4 may lodge under the branches of it; ” and to “ leaven which 
* a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, until the- 
‘ whole was leavened.” 

It is to this indestructible and all - pervading principle 
that man will owe his salvation, and it is to its method of 
operation that we must now turn our attention. 

It has already been shown how the poisonous element 
which we call evil, and which is the cause of all the crime,, 
disease, poverty, and suffering in the world, entered into it 
through the organism of woman, and tainted the springs of 
human life. The immediate effect of the woman’s fall was to- 
abase her before the man, who visited upon her the affliction 
she had brought upon him, and the internal separation from 
himself which was the consequence of it, by reducing her to 
a position of inferiority. 

Hence it is that, as far as we can trace back in history,, 
woman has in all countries been regarded as man’s inferior, 
and this tradition exists most strongly in the East, and in 
the vicinity of those regions which were the cradle of the 
Noachic race. In some of the sects in these countries woman 
is not even supposed to have a soul; she is not instructed in 
matters of religion, or allowed to take part in worship; and in 
all of them she is treated as a slave, and ground down under- 
the iron heel of a social, if not always a domestic tyranny. 
In the most civilised countries of the West, the state of the 
law as regards woman and her relations to man, especially her 
husband, is a disgrace to our age. Her most sacre(f instincts, 
are violated, her inmost shrine of purity is legally outraged, 
and she is dragged through the mire of law courts, a spectacle 
for gods and men. There is no fouler stain upon that dish- 
clout covered with spangles, which we call our civilisation, 
than the position which it still assigns to woman; nothing- 
more anti-Christian—for it prostitutes the principle embodied 
in Christ, and which He sanctified upon earth by the sacri¬ 
fice of His body and blood. But now its pent-up energies, 
are finding irregular and disorderly vent in woman herself. 
Already she is beginning to make efforts, more or less frantic 
and misdirected, to assert her rights; but in default of any 
interior perception of what these rights are, she will only 
succeed in creating confusion and producing discord. The> 



•316 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


hope for woman lies in the recognition by man of the Divine 
Feminine principle in God. When once he clearly perceives 
that God is a dual Being, containing within Himself woman as 
well as man, as the word “Jehovah” signifies, he will see that 
—as it is impossible for one part of God’s being to be inferior 
to another part—woman must be essentially man’s equal. 

The mistake that woman now makes is to suppose that, 
feeling herself to be man’s equal, she is therefore qualified 
to exercise the same functions as man, to engage in the same 
pursuits, and to compete with him in the same avocations. 
Her province is to inspire man, not to rival him, to strengthen 
him by her love, not to drain him of the elements which he 
needs for his work in life, by struggling to surpass him in it. 
Woman represents the affectional side of humanity, whilst 
man represents its intellectual faculty and executive capacity. 
Woman, therefore, as the Divine Feminine descends, will be 
exonerated from the hardening cares of material productive¬ 
ness, and will now stand, God willing, in growing grace as 
those lilies of the field, while man remains their outer provi¬ 
dence. They will train themselves to watch for the tracings of 
God’s workmanship in man, and to offer to that their reverence 
and the sustaining power of their affections; they will not re¬ 
gard themselves as the immediate instruments for the divine 
application of power to the world’s needs. They will feel no 
responsibility in devising the ways and means of external 
•existence, nor suggesting the plans and movements for it. 
They will not venture to formulate opinions as to how men 
should act in great things or in small; they will feel that 
they stand as media for the transmission of a moral force 
which makes true action in the men a possibility; and when, 
in loyalty to their own internal insight and to their outgoing 
love, they give to men prepared to receive them, some fresh 
perceptions of greater or lesser truth, it will be by apprecia¬ 
tion of some force or growth or desire in man’s nature, which 
he failed to recognise, which her love discerns, but which he 
-alone knows how to apply in life’s activity. She can reveal 
him to himself as she learns meekly to look in him for signs 
of how God works through him; but the true woman owns 
not the harsher intellectual faculty required for making 
active impress on the external world. The machinery of her 


woman’s love. 


317 


nature is not constructed for direct contact with the resist¬ 
ances excited in external life by human activities, and she- 
does herself deep injury if she exposes herself needlessly ta 
such contact. But in direct ratio with her conception of the 
vastness of man’s work in all the universe, which she feeds 
with elements that she alone can draw from the divine im¬ 
mensity, will be the delicacy of her succouring service. She 
will train herself to take up the minute tenderness of the 
divine currents, and apply them to those intricate necessities 
of men, for which they are destined. With the expanding of 
her bosom-love will come the multiplication of her sensi¬ 
tive atomic fibres, and their vibratory capacity. She will 
thus grow, educating herself by the whisper of God’s love 
that she will hear every hour, more watchful, more gentle, 
more tender, more reverential, as she becomes more potent to 
all men, and as she seeks to know all the fulness and all the 
littleness of the divine service. In the degree in which she 
does this, will the man, who is opening himself to the same 
influence, recognise in her the divinely appointed channel for 
the transmission of that force by which his intelligence can 
be inspired, and his creative faculties operate; and he will 
reverence her not only as his equal, but as his presiding 
genius, drawing from God those rich stores of life with which 
he is supplied through her. He will feel her to be his indis¬ 
pensable copartner in the great evolutionary task to which 
he has set his hand, while he becomes in turn the medium 
through which her love flows out upon humanity; inspiring 
him the while with an exquisite sense of unison with her, 
and revealing to him unsuspected depths of capacity for en¬ 
joyment, in the absolute unselfishness of a love that demands 
nothing, but that floods him with its life by the very act of 
pouring through him. Such a love the world at present 
knows nothing of; but Christ knew of it, when he said, 
‘ Behold, a new commandment I give unto you, that ye love 
one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one 
another.” Had it not been that the love was new—for His 
love contained in it the Divine Feminine—there would have 
been nothing new in the commandment; for people had al¬ 
ways been in the habit of loving each other, after their own 
selfish fashion. The newness of tho commandment consisted 


318 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


in the newness of the love, which was to be fashioned after 
His bisexual love; which should banish, by the quality inher¬ 
ent in it, all those exacting passions of envy, jealousy, crav¬ 
ing, and suspicion, which characterise what still goes by the 
name of love, and which, by reason of its perverted nature, 
•carries desolation into homes that might otherwise be happy, 
poisons the very springs of pure affection, and prompts to 
murder, suicide, and all manner of crime. 

It is evident that, as through woman disease entered into 
the world, it is through woman that the remedy must be pro¬ 
vided, and that it is by uniting herself with the Divine Woman, 
that the force will descend which will expel the impurities 
which now taint her organism. The link which has been 
furnished to form this union is to be found in the person of 
Ohrist; therefore He repeatedly calls Himself the Bridegroom, 
and illustrates His relation to the race by the parable of the 
wise and foolish virgins. It is through this interior union 
with Christ, that the Church, of which woman is the feminine 
principle, becomes the Bride, the Lamb’s wife. To those who 
can see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and under¬ 
stand with their hearts, the book of Bevelation is full of this 
mystery; therefore, “ Let us be glad and rejoice, and give 
‘ honour to Him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and 
‘ His wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted 
* that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: 
•* for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.” 1 The “ fine 
linen, which is the righteousness of saints,” signifies the 
atomic overlay with which she becomes clothed by the opera¬ 
tion of those who have passed into the other world, and by 
whom alone she can be prepared for her union with Christ; 
it is they who furnish her with the wedding garment; and 
herein lies a great mystery, for, as I have said before, it is 
impossible for any man or woman in their present condition 
to come into direct relations with Christ. The rays of His 
4 ?lory are too intense for any human being to support, without 
the modifying influence of a transmitting medium. This trans¬ 
mitting medium is composed of the spirits of just men made 
perfect, and their relation to us is fully described in the 
Epistle to the Hebrews. They are those who have “ all died 

1 Revelation xix. 7, 8. 


HUMAN COMPLETION. 


319 


4 in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen 
4 them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced 
4 them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims 
4 on the earth; ” and again, “ these all, having obtained a 
4 good report through faith, received not the promise; God 
4 having provided some better thing for us, that they without 
4 us should not be made perfect.” 1 

The reason that the saints who died in faith received not 
the promise, but only saw it afar off, is that the visible and 
invisible parts of our world do in fact only form one universe, 
so intimately interlocked atomically, that it is not possible 
for one part of it to be redeemed without the other. There¬ 
fore, although this “ great cloud of witnesses ” by whom we 
are encompassed have “ received the promise ” of the Divine 
Feminine which they saw afar off, and are persuaded of it and 
have embraced it, so that they have become the media of 
transmission for its descent, they cannot enter into its fulness, 
unless we who are on earth enter into it also. Therefore it is 
said that “ God has provided a better thing for us, that they 
without us should not be made perfect.” This “better thing” 
is the ultimate victory to be accomplished through us, and 
they “ cannot be made perfect without us,” because our organ¬ 
isms contain certain elements essential to the perfection of 
theirs, of which they were deprived by the process of natural 
death. In a word, they are still suffering from the infernal 
virus which has poisoned the whole universe, both visible 
and invisible, and which can only be expelled by the com¬ 
bined operation of those in the flesh, with those who have 
parted from it. 

There has been so much delusion concerning all these 
things, that although they seem very clear to the babes to whom 
they have been revealed, it is difficult to make them so to 
the wise and prudent from whom they are hidden; chiefly 
because it is characteristic of those who are wise and prudent 
to feel a very profound contempt for babes, and an equally 
profound respect for their own superior wisdom and prudence. 
The propositions, therefore, that an invisible region exists, 
that it is only invisible to the multitude because they are 
short-sighted, and that it is not a different world from the one 
1 Hebrews xi. 13, 39, 40. 


320 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


visible even to the short-sighted, but is an integral part of it* 
are not likely to be accepted, excepting by those who feel that 
this must be so by a higher faculty than their reason supplies ; 
but to them it will not seem strange that the conditions there- 
are not very widely different from those which exist here; 
that the struggle between good and evil goes on there as it- 
does here; that Christian Churches continue to fight, heathen 
to rage, and the people to imagine a vain thing; while occultists- 
mystify, Buddhists contemplate and beg, and learned profes¬ 
sors and metaphysicians investigate and discuss. Only the 
conditions differ, the attraction of affinity is stronger, and the- 
forces are ranged against each other more systematically,, 
especially in the higher and lower regions, where the union 
of the good, and the consolidation of the bad, are each more 
powerful respectively. 

Numerically the population of the seen part of the universe 
is, of course, but a fraction of that which inhabits the unseen; 
and the forces in operation there are therefore infinitely more 
powerful than they are here. Nevertheless, its progress and 
fortunes are absolutely dependent upon those of the earth we- 
inhabit, and the regeneration of the universe can only take- 
place through the instrumentality of man upon our own orb. 
The reason that this is so is, that upon it the disease entered ; 
and it is through the influence of woman upon man, that the 
leaven is to be introduced which will leaven the whole lump, 
as it was through the influence of woman upon man that the 
virus entered by which the whole was infected. It is in 
order to endow the woman with a new force which will 
enable her thus to act upon man, that the chain of saints has- 
been established, by means of which the Divine Feminine ele¬ 
ments may be transmitted to her directly from Christ. 

As once she listened to the voice of the tempting serpent, 
so now she must tune her ear to the whisper of the tender 
angel. As once she felt the shock of an infernal vibration, 
convulsing and debasing her organism, so now she must invite 
the thrill of a divine impulse to purify and uplift it. As once 
she gave to the man the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good 
and evil, so now she must give to him the fruit of the tree of 
life, which is freely offered to her. 

And as once she deceived him with lying speech, so now 


DISCIPLINE OF THE AFFECTIONS. 


321 


she must inspire him with the true Word itself. As to her 
was due his expulsion from the garden of Eden, so to her 
must be due his restoration to it. She is the priestess of 
the shrine at which man is henceforth to worship, and repre¬ 
sents there the High Priest, her Bridegroom. These are 
woman’s rights, and this is woman’s mission. 

“ Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the 

* holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way”— 
i.e., the atomic distribution of the elements of the Divine 
Feminine into nature—“which He hath consecrated for us 
‘ through the veil, that is to say, His flesh ”—or His human 
organism—“and having an High Priest over the house of 
f God; let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance 

* of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil con¬ 
science, and our bodies washed with pure water”— i.e., 
divine purity—“let us hold fast the profession of our faith 
4 without wavering; for He is faithful that promised.” 

The atomic overlay, to which allusion has been made as 
the bridal investiture of woman, consists of elements intro¬ 
duced into the present gross animal atomic covering of 
feminine passion, whereby a chemical change takes place in 
them of a sublimating and purifying character. This is a 
slow and gradual process, and the preparation required for it 
is one of severe self-discipline of the affections. All natural 
affections must be subordinated to those which are divine. 
Those instincts which have hitherto been considered the 
highest and purest in human nature, must give way to others, 
higher and purer still; thus the love of children for their 
parents, of a wife for her husband, of a mother for her chil¬ 
dren, must be relegated into the second rank. This is what 
Christ meant when He said, “ Every one that hath forsaken 
‘ houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, 
‘ or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an 
‘ hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.” 

The tie at present existing in these cases is magnetic, and 
the rapport which constitutes it is direct. This direct rap¬ 
port must be broken, which is a most painful process, as it 
involves a certain amount of atomic dislocation. Between 
husbands and wives, where this is sometimes of a very inti¬ 
mate kind, the suffering caused seems almost unbearable; 

X 


322 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


but I can assure those who have the courage to make the 
attempt, from personal experience, that a satisfaction will 
come later, that will more than compensate for any suffering 
that may be thus incurred. The woman who would convey 
the right kind of love to those she loves must make it pass 
through Christ. She must detach her affections from the 
beloved object, and attach them to Him. She is aided in 
doing this by the chain of saints who connect her with Him. 
Her love, thus purified, passes back again to earth through 
the same channel to the loved one here, who begins to feel 
conscious of a totally different quality in it, and whose im¬ 
pulse it is to return it by the same channel; for if it is a 
man, he also can come into relations with Christ* by a similar 
chain, and be acted upon as to his affections by the same 
process; but this he must do under female guidance. 

When once the new magnetic tie is established between 
earthly man and woman, they are in a position to co-operate 
together in their struggle after purity; for, in both cases, this 
conjoint male and female co-operation is an essential prelimin¬ 
ary to receiving the complete angelic atomic overlay. It may 
last a lifetime, or it may be accomplished in a comparatively 
brief period. This depends upon the condition of the atomic 
particles, which vary in every one, according to temperament, 
the modifications they may have undergone by the habits of 
a lifetime, their inherited character, and many other causes, 
which operate in life to create organic changes. But in every 
case, so far as my present experience testifies, a long period is 
necessary of entire suppression of all passional instincts, and 
of abstinence from indulgence in them. There are plenty of 
persons in the world to carry out its peopling, without those 
who have decided to enter upon this struggle after renovated 
life-currents, contributing to the population with their old 
ones. A pause is absolutely necessary before a new depart¬ 
ure, and it is not for us to judge how long that pause may 
be. One thing, however, is quite certain, it must last until 
the overlay is completed, and that cannot commence until 
much preparatory work has been gone through, not only in 
the purification of the sex-magnetisms, but in all those which 
have been superinduced by social contact, general environ¬ 
ment, and the pursuits and habits of a lifetime. In many 


woman’s mission. 


323 


cases the work of preparation has been progressing, uncon¬ 
sciously to the person in whom it is taking place, during a 
long course of years, and will account for much suffering 
which seemed cruel and superfluous at the time. Indeed it 
may be remarked, parenthetically, that all losses, sorrows, ill¬ 
nesses, or suffering, moral or physical, are designed to convey 
lessons, and can be turned to most valuable account by those 
who regard them in that light. 

There are many women who, on reading these lines, will 
feel that they appeal to an inner sense, which will at once 
make response, but who are so hedged in by the circumstances 
of their surroundings, so entangled by family and other com¬ 
plications, that it seems absolutely impossible for them to 
give effect to their aspirations, or to enter upon the mission 
which they instinctively feel is their true one, and to which 
they would gladly at all costs dedicate their lives and energies. 
Let such take comfort; if their present duties and position 
render the abandonment of home-ties impossible in a world, 
as yet unable to appreciate their sense of what their highest 
aspirations demand, it is because they themselves are not 
ready, and because further preparatory work has yet to be 
accomplished. This internal preparation any earnest woman 
can continue for herself, no matter what the complications 
which fetter her freedom of action may be. Trials will be 
sent her, duties imposed upon her, and sorrows encompass 
her about, in which she will find her discipline, if she only 
looks for it. She must kiss the rod, remembering that it is 
not sent to chastise her in the way of punishment, but to 
purify her affections and to fortify her will. She has got to 
learn the important lesson of self-reliance, and to accustom 
herself to the thought that in this great new moral departure 
upon which the world is entering, it is she, and not the man, 
who must lead the way; it is she who must be his strength, 
and not he hers, as he has hitherto been. She must give up 
leaning upon him, and learn to support him; it is she who 
must supply him with courage, endurance, and aspiration. 
Even his intelligence he must derive from her, though she 
knows it not; for he draws from her unconsciously the 
•elements necessary to complete his own, as well as the 
energies which shall enable him to give practical effect to 


324 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


the ideas thus derived. And yet she must not consider her¬ 
self upon this account in any way superior to man, but simply 
the complementary half of his being—she having inherently 
in herself none of the faculties which would enable her to 
grapple successfully with the problems of life, or to organise 
the reconstruction of society upon that new basis, which alone 
can be accomplished by her supplying man with the materials 
for the purpose. 

At present women are reversing this process, and, by reason 
of their absorptive capacities, are unconsciously draining man 
of the elements of his moral and executive faculties. By this 
inverted method of procedure, they are enabled to compete 
with more or less success in the intellectual and executive 
paths of life; but in the degree in which they succeed in this, 
do they stunt and destroy their own higher faculties, and in¬ 
terpose a barrier which will close the avenues to the descdht 
of the Divine Feminine. This practice is much to be depre¬ 
cated ; and those colleges for the higher education of women, 
which attract a certain class of the sex, are nurseries of 
hybrids, which turn out an inferior species of man-woman. 
They promote evolution utterly in the wrong direction. 
Woman must evolve in the realm of her affections, which is 
especially her kingdom, and develop those faculties, which are 
essentially hers, for the aid of man; and man must evolve 
in his own empire of thought, and develop those which are 
essentially his, for the aid of humanity at large. In no 
case should either sex invade each other’s territory in a 
struggle for any personal advantage, or in a spirit of rivalry; 
but the two should always be found fighting side by side 
for the universal good, in a spirit of mutual love and co¬ 
operation. 

It has been said that the circumstances of each case are 
different. No rule, therefore, can be laid down for the guid¬ 
ance of those who are desirous of opening themselves to the 
Divine Feminine, beyond the general principle of individual 
training and discipline above stated. But it may be remarked 
that though this discipline is always attended with more or 
less suffering, this varies much in degree; and there are those 
who have become conscious of the divine descent, whose 


FEMININE EVOLUTION. 


325 


atomic condition was such, that the change in the elements 
could be effected without any of that acute pain which attends 
the process in other instances. 

In order, however, to understand how this consciousness 
manifests itself, it will be necessary to enter upon a con¬ 
sideration of the next stage of feminine evolution, as bearing 
not only upon her own development, but also upon the new 
and higher conditions which await the advancing man. 


CHAPTER XX. 


.METHOD OF THE DESCENT OF THE DIVINE FEMININE—AND OF ITS RE¬ 
CEPTION BY WOMAN — THE SYMPNEUMA — INTRODUCTION OF THE 
DIVINE FEMININE INTO THE WORLD, THROUGH THE BIRTH, LIFE,. 
DEATH, RESURRECTION, AND ASCENSION OF CHRIST—THE OUTPOUR¬ 
ING ON THE DISCIPLES ON THE DAY OF PENTECOST—THE SYMPNEU- 
MATIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 

The two dogmas of the Churches of Christendom that operate 
most powerfully against the descent of the Divine Feminine, 
which now seeks to impart its purifying and regenerating 
influence to the “ Bride, the Lamb’s wife,” are the atonement 
as popularly understood, and the Trinity; for it is mainly to 
these dogmas that the present debased and degraded condition 
of the religious instinct is due. I have already shown the 
fatal effect which such a thoroughly false conception of the 
Deity as that which the doctrine of a propitiatory sacrifice 
of the just for the unjust presents, must exercise upon His 
worshippers. 

The dogma of the Trinity, according to the theology of 
Christendom, operates no less injuriously, though in a differ¬ 
ent way. Its tendency is to confuse the faculty of spiritual 
perception to such an extent, that it is extremely difficult for 
those who have incorporated it into their religious belief, to- 
apprehend the true nature of God. 

It was, in fact, a dogma projected, from a lower source than 
that which inspired Arius, into the mind of Athanasius, and 
the majority of the Council which supported him, in the 
earlier part of the fourth century after Christ; but it is not 
to be found even in the external sense of the New Testament, 
though insidious attempts have been made to introduce it; 


DESCENT OF THE DIVINE FEMININE. 


327 


as, for instance, in the seventh verse of the fifth chapter of 
the First Epistle of St John, which was such an evident inter¬ 
polation that it has been altogether omitted in the Eevised 
Version; and in the manufacture of that strange expression, 
“ the Holy Ghost,” which to the popular mind conveys v a 
somewhat different idea from the Spirit of God, partly owing 
to the unwarrantable use of capitals where none are used 
in the original, and partly to special occasions being selected 
for its application. 

There is no possible excuse for the word nrvedfia being 
sometimes translated “ spirit ” and sometimes “ ghost,” nor is 
there the slightest reason for supposing that when Christ 
commanded His disciples to baptise in the name of “the 
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” He was then, for the 
first time, imposing upon them a triune God, in the sense 
which has since been invented. The expression signified 
God; Humanity, as typified by Himself; and the Spirit or 
pneuma by which alone they could be united through 
Him. 

The pneuma is, in fact, the spirit which conveys to man the 
consciousness of the Divine Feminine, by a process presently 
to be described, as it did to Christ when it descended upon 
Him in the form of a dove; and it is by its operation in the 
organism of man, that the new revelation descends to him, 
and conveys to him the fundamental truth that he is a 
biune being in the service of a biune God, and that, until 
he regains the lost image of his Maker, he can never be 
reunited to Him. 

In the first instance, the Divine Feminine descends to 
woman, and the method of its descent is through Christ, 
masculine and feminine Himself, the biune Word. From 
Him it descends through angelic pairs in the upper region of 
the invisible world to pairs beneath them, becoming tempered 
as it passes earthwards, till it reaches that' pair which has 
been divinely commissioned for its final transmission to the 
woman on earth, in whom they have been labouring during 
her preparatory and disciplinary stages, and with whom they 
are in special structural atomic affinity. 

When a sufficient change has been effected in the gross 
passional particles of her nature, for physical sensation to be 


328 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


conveyed, she becomes conscious, for the first time, of a pecu¬ 
liar vibratory motion in her nervous centres, affecting the 
whole organism with thrills of exquisite delight, the abso¬ 
lutely pure and divine character of which is quite unmis¬ 
takable, if the work of preparation has not been unduly 
hurried ; but inasmuch as it is in the power of human beings 
who have not the necessary experience, or whose zeal outruns 
their discretion, to precipitate results, too much care cannot 
be taken in these early stages not to anticipate, by hypnotic 
suggestion or otherwise, the divine process. Any human 
interference with these is in the highest degree dangerous, as 
advantage can be taken of it by the evil ones, who are on the 
alert, and whose whole effort is to simulate these sensations 
by others which are nearly allied to them, but which are 
antagonistic in their operation, and which, if encouraged, 
would end in terrible disaster . 1 If, however, the perils by 
the way are to daunt those who are prepared to sacrifice 
themselves in the effort to purify and renew the human life- 
currents, it would be better that they never entered upon the 
struggle; for, after reaching a certain stage, they will only 
encounter greater dangers by turning back, than by pressing 
forward. They need have no fear if the motive be kept 
absolutely pure: it is better, by excess of daring, to risk 
encountering a pitfall, than by excess of timidity to step 
backwards into one. The outstretched hand is never short¬ 
ened that it cannot save; and however dexterously the snares 
are concealed, they are always visible to the eyes illumined 
by the light of love and faith. 

Progress in this difficult path is zigzag. We advance by 
the very force of our blunders, for they mean experience. 
We first try in one direction, and finding that we are getting 
off the track, we try another, till we are checked again by 
some mistake, and so on; but on looking back, we find we 
have made progress: it is like tacking in the teeth of a gale 
of wind, and it sometimes seems slow work, for often we may 
lose a little way, but this is our own fault. We have failed 
to keep up the incessant strain which the effort requires, have 

1 The chronicles of the Roman Catholic Church contain numerous instances 
of obsession, by Incubi and Succnbi of the nature here indicated, among its 
devotees. 


STRUGGLES AFTER PURITY. 


329 


thought we would run into some little harbour to take breath 
=and find shelter, only to discover that it was a pirate’s cove, 
and that our only safety was once more to face the storm; 
but when we feel quite exhausted, and a further combat with 
the elements seems impossible, then, in the most unexpected 
way, at the very crisis of our despair, land appears, and we 
are gently wafted into the harbour of refuge which has been 
prepared for us, there to taste delights which compensate for 
all our perils and fatigues—delights which are indescribable, 
because they are the revelations of the divine mysteries, which 
can only be understood by those who have, by long and arduous 
effort, won their way to initiation into them. But of this 
whosoever has tasted them feels sure, that they are divine, in 
that they excite an all-absorbing desire of service, with an 
all-embracing love of humanity; and in that they convey an 
ineffable sense of personal union with Christ, and a peace that 
literally passes all understanding. 

These are results that the evil ones cannot simulate — 
though it is not impossible that the pioneers into this new and 
unexplored land of the purest and loftiest affections, may have 
tumbled into one of their traps. If so, they have gained an 
•experience which, however agonising it may have been at the 
time, will be of great value when they have effected their 
escape; and, indeed, when they have reached a certain point, 
they find that they have passed a whole class of dangers, and 
can breathe again, and, like Christian in ‘ The Pilgrim’s Pro¬ 
gress,’ can go on their way rejoicing. 

The woman, then, pursuing this upward path, encased in 
the panoply of the purity she has so long struggled for, and 
-vigilant at all points, boldly presses onwards, inspired by a 
heroism which increases with every effort that she makes, and 
radiant with the ardours of new affections, which she feels 
glowing within her. 

With this fire of the new life burning in her, will dawn 
upon her awakened consciousness the absolute conviction of 
the duality of her nature. She will know—not because it is 
to be found in the Bible—not because her reason suggests its 
truth—but because her physical organism forces the fact 
upon her, that she is the feminine half of a twofold being, 
and that her completion consists in union with her masculine 


330 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


complement; and as she progresses, that union will take form 
in a manner which she cannot mistake, though it will remain 
veiled from her who he is, whether he is in this visible world 
or has passed away from it. This is kept a secret for her own 
protection, for woman must be far advanced before she can 
resist the tendency to imagine that he who is to be hers for 
all eternity, and who was part of her from the first concep¬ 
tion in the creative womb of the biune soul-germ, is not the 
man she most loves or has loved on earth. This may or may 
not be the case; but she is not allowed to know it while he is 
on this earth, although in rare cases, and for very special pur¬ 
poses, it may be made known to others. When, however,, 
she has reached a certain stage of progress it may be revealed 
to her, if he has passed away from it. In that case he will 
himself reveal it to her, when her natural affections have 
been so uplifted out of all personal desire that it is no longer 
dangerous to her. 

It is through the operation of the biune principle of the 
divine affections, transmitted in the manner described to her 
physical, moral, and psychical nature, that this consciousness 
of the complementary being, whom we call the “Sympneuma,”' 
is attained; and thus it is that the revelation of this sym¬ 
pneuma is effected through the operation of the “ pneuma ** 
or “ spirit ” of God, with which it is so absolutely identified, 
that the union with the sympneuma seems identical with a 
union with Christ; and therefore it was that Saint Theresa, 
Madame Guyon, and other devout persons, whose exceptional 
temperament and organisation permitted of such revelations, 
felt themselves to be brides of Christ. Such instances in 
time past were very rare; but, owing to the organic changes 
which are taking place in the world, they are every day 
becoming more common. 

It is to the divine pneumatic operation, which can only be 
effected by the channel provided by His organism, that Christ 
alluded when He said, “ But the helper, which is spirit, which 
is holy, whom the Father will send in my name, it. shall teach 
you all things; ” and therefore it is said of Christ Himself, 
that* He was conceived of a holy spirit, because it was by this 
“ operation ” that He was brought into being in the womb of 
the Virgin. And so again He said, “ But when the helper is 


THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH. 


331 

* come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even th& 

* spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, it shall 

* testify of me.” 

The evidence that this divine biune descent is the spirit 
of truth of whom He here speaks, is that it does most em¬ 
phatically testify of Him in the organism of every one whom 
it visits; but the world could not receive it in His day, for 
He tells His disciples, when they dreaded losing Him, that He 
“will pray the Father, and He shall give you another helper,. 
‘ that it may abide with you for ever, even the spirit of truth ; 
‘ whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth it not,. 
‘ neither knoweth i^; but ye know it, for it is abiding by 
‘ your side, and shall be in you.” And He explains that this 
promise cannot be accomplished, unless He dies as to His 
outer frame here, and passes into the invisible world : “ Never- 
‘ theless I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go- 

* away: for if I go not away, the helper will not come unto- 

* you; but if I depart, I will send it unto you. And when it 

* is come, it will convict the world of sin, and of righteous- 

* ness, and of judgment.” 

We read of the partial fulfilment of this promise in the 
account of the descent of the cloven tongues of fire in the 
book of the Acts. It was necessary that Christ should die 
first, because only by the dissolution of His outer frame could 
the particles containing the Divine Feminine principle be dis¬ 
tributed, and atomic affinity established between them and 
His disciples. “But ye know it,” He says, “for it is abiding 
by your side and shall be in you.” That is to say, whilst 
Christ was still on earth, abiding by the side of His disciples* 
the pneunia, being in Him, was thus abiding by them; after 
His departure, the pneuma, emanating from Him, should, 
enter into and be in them. The atomic rapport was theirs, 
whilst He spoke; but the combination consequent on that 
rapport could not be effected, until the particles of His owa 
frame had been liberated, and those who were most conscious, 
of this rapport were the women who clung to Him to the 
last, and especially that one woman who early felt the pure 
attraction of the peculiar magnetism with which He was. 
endowed) and whom, when she anointed His feet, with a 
divinely inspired prescience of the change peculiar to it which 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


332 

His body was to undergo during interment, He commended to 
:all who should believe in Him, saying, “Wheresoever this 

* Gospel shall be preached throughout the world, there shall 

* also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial 

* of her.” It was no wonder, then, that she was not only the 
first to see Him, but also to speak to Him in His subsurface 
body, when she was attracted in the early morning to His 
sepulchre, and when He said, “Touch me not, for I am not 
jet ascended to my Father; ” for her organism could not have 
borne the contact, while His needed translation into the higher 
sphere, before He could allow the elements it contained to 
stream forth upon man. 

The significance of the descent of the cloven tongues has 
never been recognised by the Churches, owing to their dark¬ 
ened condition as to the nature and functions of the Holy 
Spirit; and even the disciples themselves did not fully appre¬ 
hend it. Peter saw in it the fulfilment of the prophecy of 
Joel,, which had reference not to that manifestation, but to the 
•evolutionary epoch upon which we are now entering. It is 
evident, from the epistles in the Hew Testament and the 
writings of the period which have been handed down to us, 
that the general impression among the disciples at this time 
was, that the final catastrophe was at hand; and that the 
second coming of Christ was to occur within the lifetime of 
some of them. This appears very strongly in the 3d chapter 
•of the Second Epistle of Peter, and in some of the writings 
•of Paul. It was based upon the statement that Christ made 
to some of those to whom He was speaking, that they should 
not taste of death until they should see the Son of man com¬ 
ing in His kingdom ; and again, upon His promise, just before 
His crucifixion, that “ in a little while ” they would see Him 
again. 

The apparently miraculous powers that accompanied the 
manifestation of the cloven tongues confirmed this impression; 
though these were the results, under natural law, which must 
of necessity have attended the introduction of this new vital 
energy into the organisms of such of the disciples as had been 
prepared, by daily magnetic contact with Christ, to receive it; 
and we are told that when the disciples asked Christ, “ Wilt 
Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel ? ” He said, 


THE FIRST ADVENT. 


333 


“ It is not for you to know times or seasons, which the Father 
hath settled on His own authority.” 

In point of fact, the promises of Christ in regard to the 
advent of the “ helper ” as preceding. His own coming, had 
reference to two separate events. The one was the initiation 
of His great work ; the other, its accomplishment. This great 
work was not, as has been before remarked, His death upon 
the cross as a “ propitiation ” for our sins, but His death, 
burial, resurrection, ascension, and descent upon His dis¬ 
ciples in fiery potency. It was in the sequence of these 
events that the distribution of the atomic particles of His 
biune nature could be accomplished, and the elements of the 
Divine Feminine could be incorporated into the organism 
of man. > 

Each of these events contained a mystery, too profound to- 
be entered upon at length here. By His death—and each 
account of it contains an interior signification, which I may 
perhaps be permitted to write about at some future time—He 
distributed the atomic elements of the Divine Feminine into 
nature. By His burial, He was enabled to descend into the 
lower unseen region of our universe, and distribute them 
there; for its redemption would be impossible, unless atomic 
affinity had been established between the particles of visible 
and those of invisible nature. By His resurrection He came 
into physical relations with His disciples, and thus was 
enabled magnetically and inseverably to attach His sub¬ 
surface body to their grosser organisms. Without this the 
descent of the pneuma would have been impossible. By His 
ascension, He inaugurated a new method of translation from 
the visible to the invisible world, and became the first-fruits 
of them that slept. And by His descent on the day of Pen¬ 
tecost, He completed His first mission to earth. 

The internal meaning of the manifestation which took 
place when the disciples were gathered together, fully ex¬ 
plains its nature. The “ sound from heaven as of a rushing 
mighty wind ” signifies the new spiritual birth of those who 
came under its influence; the necessity and character of this 
spiritual birth was explained by Christ when He said, “ Mar- 
‘ vel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The 
* wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound 


334 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


‘ thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, nor whither it 

* goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” 

The “ cloven tongues, like as of fire,” were cloven to sym¬ 
bolise the two-in-one • nature of the principle they repre¬ 
sented ; they were of fire, because that principle was the 
ardour of bisexual potency; and they were in the form of 
tongues, because the “ Word ” itself was thus manifested. 
This was the fulfilment of Christ’s promise, that His disciples 
should see Him again, although it was stated so enigmatically 
that they were mystified. “ And they said therefore, What is 
this that He saith, A little while ? We cannot tell what He 
saith.” And it was plain that He perceived that they mis¬ 
understood His explanation, for He said, at the end of it, 
■“ These things have I spoken to you in proverbs: but the 
time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in pro¬ 
verbs, but I shall show you plainly of the Father.” That 
time came to them when they passed away from the earth; 
it is coming to us now. 

Had the apostles and these disciples understood that the 
cloven tongues contained a far deeper meaning than the fac¬ 
ulty they acquired of speaking in foreign languages, healing 
the sick, prophesying, and so forth, and had they perceived, in 
the new forces they thus acquired, the principle of the Divine 
Feminine operating through them, as it had through Christ, 
they would not so soon have lost their powers, which scarcely 
lasted their lives and those of their immediate followers. 

But though the outward manifestation of its potency dis¬ 
appeared, the great work of Christ—the planting of the divine 
spark of that fire of love for the race, with which He burned, 
in the human organism—had been accomplished; and it is 
because it has been kindling and burning ever since, that men 
are now beginning to feel its heat, and to know what that heat 
means. 

So it is that much that must have been obscure to the 
•disciples, is, by the light of this revelation, made plain to us. 
As. for instance, when he says, “ I have yet many things to 

* say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit 
‘ when the Spirit of truth is come, it will guide you into all 

* truth: for it shall not speak of itself; but whatsoever it shall 

* hear, that shall it speak : and it will show you things to come. 


THE SYMPNEUMA. 


335 


* It shall glorify me; for it shall receive of mine, and shall 
4 show it unto you.” This passage refers to the method of 
inspiration which reaches man through the “ operation ” of 
the spirit of truth, which reveals the existence of the Sym- 
pneuma, and by virtue of that revelation opens to him an 
avenue of inspiration which he never before possessed ; there¬ 
fore Christ says of the spirit, “ It shall not speak of itself; 
but whatsoever it shall hear, that shall it speak ”—that is, 
inspiration will be adapted to the recipient through the 
appointed channel. “ For it shall receive of mine, and shall 
show it unto you,” signified that this biune principle, oper¬ 
ating between the pair in the invisible world, and the per¬ 
son acted upon by them on earth, reveals to that person the 
Sympneuma. So Christ is glorified in the spirit of truth 
or the “ helper.” And so of all His other promises and pro¬ 
phecies, of which His disciples expected to see the fulfilment; 
we see them in the descent of the Divine Feminine by the 
operation of the “helper,” and they come as an individual 
revelation to the heart of every one that is open to it. The 
sign of the times in which we live, and of the end of this 
dispensation of darkness, which is popularly called " the end 
of the world,” is to be found in the fact that this is the com¬ 
mencement of the great era of personal revelation. 

Therefore when Christ “was demanded of the Pharisees, 
4 when the kingdom of God should come, He answered 

* them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with obser- 
4 vation: neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, 
4 behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” 

When, by the operation of the Pneuma, the Sympneuma 
is revealed to woman by atomic contact with the pair in the 
invisible world divinely commissioned for the purpose, she 
becomes conscious of an immense increase of faculty, and 
this lies chiefly in the direction of correcting the faults of 
her nature which she was unable to grapple with before. 
Heretofore the experience of the most earnest and excellent 
people has been that in spite of the energetic endeavours of 
a lifetime, they have been unable to eradicate from their 
natures their besetting sins. They accounted for this by the 
fact of all sin being “ original,” and in this they were 
right, for it was an inherited taint of virus from the fallen 


336 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


world, projected through the animal, creation into this one ; 
and they comforted themselves by the reflection that it was 
washed out in the blood of the Lamb, and in this, again, 
they were right, for it is by the distribution of the atomic 
elements of the Divine Feminine contained in His blood, that 
the redemption of both the visible and invisible worlds has 
become possible. 

The great work of Christ was to bring the Divine 
Feminine within reach of every human being here, and this 
the woman is the first to find out when the Sympneuma is 
revealed to her, because that revelation brings to her con¬ 
sciousness the biune principle through which she derived 
her life, even when she was unconscious of it; but it is 
not until she becomes conscious of it that she is taught how~ 
to employ its vigours for the expulsion of her own evils— 
indeed those evils cannot be fully revealed to her until then. 

I am alluding exclusively to woman, because I shall treat o-f 
man separately in his new relation to her. It was to her that 
the revelation contained in this book was first made, and it 
is upon her that the responsibility is laid of first evolving 
in accordance with the principles which she derives from it. 
Hot only does she acquire new powers of introspection, ne\^ 
weapons for combat, and new dexterity in using them, but 
she acquires also increased capacity of subsurface vision, 
increased intelligence for understanding what she sees, in¬ 
creased potency of sympathy, and increased ingenuity in dis¬ 
covering methods by which that sympathy can be imparted 
to encourage, to support, and to uplift. 

I will here quote some words which my wife dictated to 
me on this subject before leaving this world:— 

“Woman will soon be called to deep and solemn duties, 
‘ in which nothing can take the place of her own effort, for 
‘ she must, all alone, in her appointed time and place, bear 

* the consciousness of the growing Word of God within the 
‘ inner frame, that forms as Sympneumata unite. She must, 
‘ for this end, stand in isolation from all the currents of the 
‘ outer world; she will soon stand in sweetest contact with 
‘ the currents of the heavens. 

“ The woman who is becoming sensitive to sympneumatic 

* life, need change in nothing of her ministrations of hand 


THE MYSTERY OF WOMANHOOD. 


337 


and head, so far as she gives out life, thought, pity; but let 

* her not dare to take in aught from friend or world—only 

* and alone from the life of the higher beings whom God brings 

* now to those who seek to rise. Every thought of the natural 
‘ man or woman, not yet instructed in the heavenly education, 

* is poison to her mind; every highest feeling in them, is now 

* insufficient as food for her aspirations. She must case herself 

* with steel against the whole mental, moral, and physical 

* movement of life around her, for it is positive and literal 

* death to her, and to the growing formation within her frame, 

* which is the tender sweet growth of the Beloved One, from 

* whose presence opens all the being to the influences of the 

* great Two-in-One.. 

“ Great pity should be felt towards those called to minister 

* to others in their incipient stages of growth, and who have 
‘ learnt to stand in the region of the forming beings, as to 

* deeper consciousness; but who suffer into * outmosts ’ from 

* every variation in the states of those they are called upon 

* to uplift and to encircle, and with whom the rejection of 
4 the growth into highest life would now be almost death; 

* because their love seeks to flow out towards their charge, 

* and any unwillingness to open the whole organism to 
that love, whether conscious or unconscious, tortures and 

* crucifies. 

“ Of inner laws which women must know for themselves, 

* there are these: however deep within the nature that point 

* may be at which occurs an interchange of love—that is, life 

* —between the closest bound of souls, fraternally, conjugally, 

* or otherwise, in the case of the woman there remains beyond, 

* a depth into which man can never penetrate;—in that 

* ‘ within ’ she is eternally alone with God. 

“ What she knows within that depth is for ever to man a 

* mystery, save for what God, for ends of service, instructs 

* her to set forth; but it can never be known to man except 
4 through woman. In the deep and inward man-woman 
« union of pure essences, she touches God herself: through 
‘ whatever atomic chain of beings this union is effected, man 
‘ touches God through her. 

“ Hence arises a most solemn science, in which she must 

Y 


338 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


* be educated now by the wisdom of the angelic womanhood, 
‘ —for without her understanding it, men cannot be saved. 
‘ The inner life-currents of God, which are the interior spirit 

* and power of all others, pass out through the woman’s form 

* radiating from her centre, to which no other life-currents 

* can have access but the divine one. She is properly and 
‘ only a radiative orb, and her life is passed immediately into 

* the enveloping outer form of herself,—her Sympneuma; and 

* then mediately, by countless methods of distribution, into 

* the universe at large. 

“ Let woman, with spirit consecrated to the Holy One who 

* first designs to love and visit her, seek for her world-service 

* that it may no longer be hourly violated, as it is now, by 

* every method and custom of the man-womanhood of the 

* race.” 

Much more could be written on this subject, but this is 
not the place to say it; nor would it be appropriate, except 
to those who have given proofs of their devotion and sincerity 
by passing successfully through those earlier trials which 
no human will can impose upon them, but which, in the 
course of the divine training, they may be called upon to 
encounter. 

Enough has been said to appeal to the nobler instincts of 
every pure woman; for those instincts must be revolted by 
the relations which she bears to man under existing condi¬ 
tions. It needed not this book to tell her that they must be 
the result of a foul inversion; that, though the source from 
which the generative principle of life emanated, is infinitely 
pure, its current has been perverted. The maiden shrinking 
which many an innocent girl feels at the prospect of marriage, 
is a testimony to the fact that the animalism which has de¬ 
graded the union which her purer nature craves, to one she 
dreads, is not what was originally intended, but that it has 
become corrupted through an infernal and poisonous element 
which has been introduced into it, and which it is her function 
now to expel. If the picture which I have attempted to 
draw of woman’s present position, and of her relation to man 
may seem harsh in some respects, it is not to discourage 
her, but to stimulate her to redeem that position, and to re- 


WOMAN, THE SAVIOUR OF MAN. 


339 


form those relations; and my experience of the patience, 
the courage, the fortitude, and the heroism of woman, con¬ 
vinces me that this appeal will not only find a responsive 
echo in her breast, but will rouse her to exertions which will 
finally culminate in triumph. It can only be by her efforts 
that man can be lifted from the slough of ignorance and 
sensuality into which she first dragged him, and where he 
now tramples upon her. 


340 


CHAPTER XXL 


THE SYMPNEUMATIC DESCENT—ITS INFERNAL SIMULATION—THE FUNC¬ 
TION OF BISEXUAL ATOMS—CONTACT WITH PNEUMATIC CENTRES- 

SOCIAL CONVENTIONALITIES IMPEDE MALE AND FEMALE CO-OPERA¬ 
TION— INSANE DELUSIONS — THE RELATION OF CHRIST TO MAN 
THROUGH WOMAN ILLUSTRATED BY ST PAUL—KABBALISTIC INTER¬ 
PRETATIONS. 

It is about fourteen years ago since the consciousness of 
the sympneumatic presence was first awakened—in the or¬ 
ganism of a devout pure-minded woman of about sixty-five 
years of age, who has now passed away—in its present ful¬ 
ness, and as the inauguration of a new revelation on the 
subject; for, although history from a very remote period 
records visitations somewhat similar in character, which 
degenerated into the most filthy and obscene mysteries, and 
though they have been known in later times, as in the cases 
I have already cited, as well as in infernal obsessions, the 
time had not arrived for such manifestations to be understood, 
and they were too full of danger to be permitted, except under 
very special conditions. Now, however, they have become 
absolutely necessary to counteract the invasive sex-current, 
which has already begun to work much mischief among 
persons of sensitive temperament, especially in spiritual¬ 
istic circles; many of whom are under the impression that 
their experiences are from celestial sources, and who will 
only find out the grievousness of their mistake when it is 
too late. 

Theology and science alike are powerless to grapple with 
this danger; the former denounces it as of the devil,—which 
is true, but which carries no conviction to the mind of the 
subject, who probably does not believe in a devil, or who may 


A HIDDEN DANGER. 


341 


easily mistake him for an angel of light, and who feels that 
his clerical adviser is merely using a Church formulary, and 
is probably utterly ignorant of the whole matter so far as his 
personal investigation is concerned. 

Indeed, the class of persons among whom these experiences 
occur, as a rule keep them profoundly secret: they are con¬ 
stantly increasing, however, both in England and America, 
especially in the latter country, and statistics on the subject, 
could they be obtained, would astonish the sceptical, and 
afford an extensive field of operations for the Psychical Ke- 
search Society, who, nevertheless, would escape from the di¬ 
lemma in which they would be placed, by the easy expedient 
of calling them subjective; a term which explains nothing. 

Science is, of course, powerless to meet the evil: for, in the 
first place, it denies that it exists; and, in the second, if it 
was forced upon its notice, it would be explained by some 
long word, of which neither those who invented it, nor any¬ 
body else, would understand the meaning. 4t will not be 
possible, however, much longer to maintain the reticence 
which has hitherto been observed on the subject, as the effect 
upon the human organism is sooner or later certain to pro¬ 
duce physical or mental disturbance. This has already been 
the case in numerous instances; and if medical men do not 
talk of them, it is either because the cause has been concealed 
by the patient, or because it is regarded as merely the result 
of a cerebral disturbance instead of its origin. 

But neither priests nor doctors will be able to stem the 
tide as it grows in volume: it is a bane which can only be 
met by its antidote; and as it is the result of the direct opera¬ 
tion of invisible beings from the nether region of our own 
world, it must be met by the direct operation of invisible 
beings from the upper one. Persons must therefore be found 
who will brave the dangers, suspicions, ridicule, or obloquy 
with which they will be assailed in their attempt to acquire 
the powers that will not only enable them to beat back this 
invading influence, but to draw down into the world such 
currents of divine purity as shall cleanse the foul magnetisms 
which taint all social and domestic relations, and to which all 
the miseries and woes of humanity are primarily due. 

Almost immediately on the sympneumatic descent, above 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


34Ss 

alluded to, taking place, many persons—myself and wife 
among the number—became conscious of it. During the 
fourteen years which have elapsed since then, new develop¬ 
ments have occurred; but the time had not come until now 
to give to the world the manner in which these have taken 
form in my mind, under the influences which have directed 
this statement, although, three years ago, some conclusions 
and explanations arrived at then were given, as far as possible, 
in the book called * Sympneumata,’ the method of production 
of which I have described in the fourth chapter of this book. 
It deals exclusively with the practical bearing of this new 
advent upon the fortunes of the race, and I would earnestly 
recommend it to the perusal of such of my readers as may 
have had their interest sufficiently aroused by the subject 
treated of, to follow me. thus far. 1 

A few words, however, are necessary to explain, so far as 
language enables me to do so, the difference between pneu¬ 
matic-atomic interlocking and pneumatic-atomic combination; 
the former being the special characteristic of sympneumatic 
contact, as contradistinguished from the only contact which 
has been heretofore possible between man and the beings in 
the unseen. 

I have already alluded to the difference which exists be¬ 
tween sentient and non-sentient or moral atoms; if I have 
shrunk from entering more fully into the subject, it is not 
because I feared the mockery and ridicule which this book is 
certain to evoke, but because I did fear that if I made too great 
a demand upon the credulity of my readers, many, who might 
be disposed to accept some of the truths which I feel it con¬ 
tains, would reject them if they were called upon to believe too 
much. As I cannot offer them any proof for what I am about 
to state, I do not ask them to believe it, but merely to assume 
it as a possible hypothesis, just as they have assumed Dar¬ 
win’s hypothesis as to the origin of man. 

The fact, then, which has been so clearly shown to me in 
regard to these moral atoms that I cannot doubt it myself, is, 
as I have already said, that they are all sentient beings, and 
that they correspond in appearance to the moral qualities 

1 Sympneumata; or, Evolutionary Forces now Active in Man. William 
Blackwood & Sons. 


BISEXUAL ATOMS. 


343 


which they represent. Thus, all those representing virtues 
are exquisitely beautiful, whilst those which correspond to 
vices are monstrously hideous. We have a faint analogy to 
this in terrestrial insect life. A great variety, again, are of a 
mixed character: the elements of which they are composed 
form combinations according to structural affinity, and the 
result upon man is an infinite variety of complex emotions, 
violent passions, lofty aspirations, and, in fact, all that goes 
to make up what we call character and temperament. 

Those corresponding to the purest and most celestial attri¬ 
butes are in pairs, representing man’s original dual nature 
but these exquisitely formed bisexual beings were unable to 
make their abode in man until he himself had become open 
to the divine bisexual life, or, in other words, until he be¬ 
came prepared by Christ’s work on earth, for sympneumatic 
consciousness. They were expelled from man when he was 
expelled from Eden, and enfolded in the all-sheltering embrace 
of the Divine Feminine, where they remained protected until 
the time arrived when they were once again to be let down 
into a human organism. They made their advent into the 
world through the womb of the Virgin, in the person of 
Christ, and after His death, were distributed into nature, on 
the occasion of the descent of the cloven tongues. Since then 
they have been incessantly labouring in the human organism, 
endeavouring to arrange themselves, like particles in an iron 
bar, under the influence of Christ the Divine Magnet. This 
process, however, had first to be accomplished through a long 
series of beings in the invisible world; and these bisexual 
atoms form, in fact, the medium of transmission of the divine 
sympneumatic potency to earth. It is only, however, since 
that potency has been active in man, that it has been possible 
for him to transmit them to other organisms. These infinitesi¬ 
mal biune innocencies are in human form, and the fact of their 
existence was one of the secrets known to the ancients, and was 
handed down by tradition by them. They only form a trans¬ 
mitting chain for the divine vigours when they are in conjugal 
union, and hence they differ from the chain formed by atomic 
combination, where the union is not bisexual, but according 
to affinity. This statement may perhaps not seem so fantastic 
to scientific men as to the world at large, for they are familiar 


344 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


with the idea of the generation of human life by means of 
infinitesimal living entities in the vital fluid, and of disease 
by microbes, which propagate in the human organism, and with 
the fact that certain diseases thus produced affect the moral 
character and temperament, rendering persons violent, irri¬ 
table, melancholy, nervous, and so forth. Thus vices may, in 
the first instance, be sometimes traced to the action of animal¬ 
cule, of which there are in fact three classes—those which 
are atomically connected with the structure of the outer 
organism, those which are atomically in affinity with the 
psychic organism, and those which actually form the atoms 
of the pneumatic organism. 1 

I must here insert an explanation which would have ap¬ 
peared more appropriately on page 162, with regard to the 
method of the approach of the highest form of inspiration 
into the pneumatic centre of the human organism, as con- 

1 With regard to the transmission of thought, which is one of the results of 
this atomic combination, I am confirmed in my contention that the trans¬ 
mitting force has its origin in the invisible world by the following passage 
from a remarkable pamphlet published since this book was written, by a 
French writer, entitled, ‘ Esquisse d’une Demonstration Scientifique de l’Exist- 
ence de la Vie Future. Suivie d’une courte appreciation des consequences 
qu’aurait sur la Litterature et les Arts une demonstration complete (Geologie, 
Magnetisme, Hypnotisme, Generation, &c.): par P. C. Revel.’ Taking as his 
basis the axiom that effects which are similar to each other are due to causes 
which are similar to each other, he remarks that if we apply this law to thought- 
transmission, we arrive at this remarkable result:— 

“ The visible brain is the instrument of an invisible body, in which reside 
‘ memory, intelligence, will, or, in other words, the faculties termed intellectual. 

* In fact, physiology teaches us that intelligent phenomena have the brain as 

* their point of departure. Now, in experiments of thought-transmission, the 
‘ intelligent phenomena which the magnetised person exhibits, have for their 

* cause, as experience unquestionably demonstrates, the influence of the mag- 
‘ netiser. 

“ Therefore the brain of the person magnetised is the instrument of the mag- 
‘ netiser. But we have said effects which are similar to each other are due to 

* causes which are similar to each other, from which we conclude that the 

* brain in its ordinary condition is the instrument of a particular body belonging 

* to the invisible world, which body acts upon the brain, in the same manner 
‘ that the magnetiser himself acts in his experiment upon the brain of the 

* magnetised person.” 

Monsieur Revel then points out that the difference between the action of the 
brain of the magnetiser and magnetised person is more apparent than real, and 
arrives at the conclusion that this forms a complete refutation of the theory 
which establishes the visible human brain as the sole direct cause of the effects 
produced. 


CONTACT WITH PNEUMATIC CENTRES. 


345 


trasted with the disorderly inspirational approach towards 
that centre from the circumference. In the latter case all 
the defences of the human pneuma are broken through by 
the current which invades the organism from an invisible 
source, resulting in those psychic phenomena with which we 
have lately been familiar, and which are attracting increasing 
•attention. In the other case, the human will, which is the 
•central and most potent principle of the human pneuma, 
attracts by the force of its aspiration, when it is fixed in the 
service of God and humanity, the divine potency with which 
it is in affinity. It is owing to this attraction that persons 
who rise in prayer to the highest states of devotion, receive 
what they feel to be answers to their supplications, and are • 
inspired thereby to great acts of religious fervour and hero¬ 
ism ; but these do not break down any of the barriers which 
guard the inmost shrine, but reach it subtly and silently, by 
reason of its elevation, by long psychic and corporal discipline ; 
fortifying rather than otherwise those defences through which 
they have so mysteriously penetrated. This faculty of per¬ 
meation is due to the composition and nature of the sentient 
atoms of which the purest and loftiest inspirations are com¬ 
posed. Once lodged in the inmost centre of the human 
structure, they press outwards towards the circumferences of 
it, transmuting the atomic particles, first of the pneumatic 
dielectric, then of the psyche, then of the psychic dielectric, 
then of the natural body, and finally of the sphere which sur¬ 
rounds the natural body, thus repelling disorderly invasion, 
and slowly but surely, if the human will is vigorously co¬ 
operating, making all things new. 

There is no greater mistake than to suppose that human 
organisms which are called “sensitive”—or which, in other 
words, are mediumistic—are in more favourable conditions of 
receptivity to the divine touch, than those which are organic¬ 
ally dense, and closed to psychic influences. On the contrary, 
the latter expand from the centre more perfectly, and develop 
into more powerful pneumatic batteries than those where the 
•external breaches have first to be repaired. On the other 
hand, this latter class of organism has its advantages when 
those breaches have once been repaired, and can be used for 
purposes for which the previous class is not adapted. All 


346 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


have their special functions, and all can co-operate in the great 
service which should be dear to them. But it is most im¬ 
portant that those who desire to be engaged in this service* 
should not imagine that they are qualifying themselves for it 
by what is usually termed “ developing their sensitiveness.”' 
They should seek rather to close it to all external psychic in¬ 
fluence. Hence, I repeat, and I cannot insist upon this too- 
strongly, that all dabbling in spiritualism, hypnotism, and 
what is called magic, or experiments in occultism, is attended 
with serious danger to the progress of the soul, which can; 
only safely develop under the direct operation of the spirit of 
God acting upon its will-centre, through the channels pro¬ 
vided for it, and more especially through that new and power¬ 
ful sympneumatic descent which, in these latter days, has 
been vouchsafed to the world, fo reinforce the will, purify the 
affections, and arm for the fray those who have decided to 
invoke its energies, that they may become instruments in the. 
divine hand for the restitution of all things. 

I have alluded to the pneumatic organism; by it I mean 
the spirit which abides in the soul of man. Pneumatie 
atoms form the battery which acts upon psychic atoms.. 
It is not possible for sympneumatic force to act upon man 
upwards from the lower invisible world, because there is 
no bisexual transmitting chain; but it is possible for earth 
contact to exist with that world by pneumatic-atomic com¬ 
bination, and promiscuous unions are used for that purpose. 
The communications which have reached the world in the 
form of revelations have depended for their value and char¬ 
acter, not only upon the pureness and elevation of the 
earthly recipient, but also of the atomic beings, because 
they represent the* nature of the invisibles from which they 
emanated. 

When, however, two human beings occupy sympneumatie 
relations to each other on this earth, without being conscious 
of it, there is always the danger of their both falling under 
delusions—even after they have been opened sympneumatically 
to the divine descent—and being deceived by infernal simula¬ 
tions. The result in this case is very disastrous, for they still 
remain magnets, and for some time they can be used as such 
by the infernal agencies. Not for long, however, for the 


SOCIAL CONVENTIONALITIES. 


34 T 


effect of the disorderly contact into which they are now 
brought, must surely demagnetise them, and, although they 
may still remain powerful media for infernal spiritual influx, 
the special quality which carries conviction to the hearts of 
men will be wanting, and sooner or later they will become 
powerless. During the period of their obsession they re¬ 
main more or less insane, but as their mediumistic faculty 
dies out, their moral balance gradually reasserts itself, and 
they may be restored to the sympneumatic consciousness they 
lost, if not in this life, in the next. 

The main obstacle to the rapid evolution of sympneumatic 
life in the world is to be found in its existing social con¬ 
ditions, and the conventionalities which have sprung from 
them. These are naturally based upon the perfectly correct 
hypothesis, that man is such 'an essentially impure creature 
that it is dangerous to leave two persons of opposite sexes, 
alone together in a room ; while if they should happen to travel 
for a couple of days upon the most sacred mission, the vilest 
suspicions are aroused. This surrounds the co-operation of 
any man or woman, unless they happen to be married, with 
the gravest difficulty. It was right and proper that this 
should be so, for these conventionalities are the result of the 
experience which gave rise to them, and which furnishes all 
the evidence required to prove that a society in which they 
are needed, is quite incapable of criticising the motives and 
actions of those who have sought and achieved a purity of 
which it knows nothing, after long and arduous struggles of 
a kind to which it is a stranger, and which have lasted over 
a long period of years. 

I say advisedly that the world is ignorant of the nature of 
this purity, because I have never heard of, nor read of, nor 
met with, organic conditions such as may be induced by the 
special training by which alone it can be acquired. Yet, to- 
attain to it has been a motive by which the highest and 
purest men and women that the world has known, have been 
inspired; but they sought it in seclusion and abstinence, and 
the coldness and deadness which they attained, they called 
purity. Whereas the highest purity means heat and life. It 
is not the extinction of the generative principle within us* 
but its restoration to divine conditions. Men and women 


348 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


•can never find purity by keeping apart from one another; 
they must train for it together. And this training is of such 
•a nature as to cause a suffering far more acute than all the 
self-imposed rigours and penances of monks and nuns. It 
may consist of a variety of disciplines—as, for instance, when 
two young people, who are both in quest of this pearl of great 
price, and who are passionately attached to each other, feel 
that they must marry if they would win it, and yet never 
know in this life what the marriage relation, as commonly 
understood, is. Or it may consist in intimacies which, though 
pure and innocent, are calculated to arouse jealousy in quar¬ 
ters where it would be legitimate under ordinary circum¬ 
stances, and excite suspicions which nothing but supreme faith 
can banish; to say nothing of other ordeals to be undergone, 
which differ in each case, but are always of a character to try 
most severely the peculiar quality of the temperament to 
which they are applied. For the position of man in relation 
to woman, in this particular struggle, is reversed. It is she 
who, when she has herself attained to the consciousness of 
sympneumatic life, must lead him to it. From first to last 
he must be a passive instrument in her hands; under her 
guidance he must crush out of his nature every instinct of 
-animal passion, and become dead to all the old sensations, 
before he can become alive to the new. 

The man who has undergone this training finally becomes 
•absolutely impervious to, and case-hardened against, the 
subtle magnetisms which radiate from ordinary women. He 
forgets at last what the emotion of being what is popularly 
called “ in love,” was like; no charms can captivate his outer 
senses, no feminine sympathy, based on a mere personal 
sentiment, can penetrate into that inmost shrine, which he 
has dedicated to the worship of the Divine Feminine. His 
reverence for woman has never stood so high as when woman 
lias become nothing to him personally, but everything to 
humanity at large. His attachment to woman depends solely 
upon her attachment to Christ as the universal Bridegroom, 
and upon his deep internal tie with her as an indispensable 
•colleague and copartner in the stupendous mission which has 
been imposed upon her. 

Men and women who have arrived at these new relations 


MALE AND FEMALE CO-OPERATION. 


349* 


towards each other, enjoy a happiness in them which com¬ 
pensates for all the suffering they have undergone to reach it 
—a happiness which would be shattered at a blow, if they 
could be guilty of any such act of physical gratification as 
the closeness of their external relations would justify the 
world in attributing to them. And yet the progress of the 
work in which they are engaged, involves an intimacy as 
close as that between sister and sister, or mother and 
daughter, and as pure; for the needful interchanges of mag¬ 
netism can only be effected by constant and close proximity, 
by which new electro-magnetic forces can be generated, 
sufficiently powerful to resist the invasion of the infernal 
lust-currents which are now struggling to make an entry 
into the world, through the organisms of “sensitives,” who- 
are ignorant of the nature of the forces which are accom¬ 
plishing their subjection. To rescue such, when their eyes 
have been opened; to close up the rupture in their odylic 
sphere which has given entrance to the invading tainted 
magnetic current; and to restore them to physical health and 
moral sanity, is one of the most blessed duties which devolves 
upon those who are labouring in this new sphere of action 
for it is one which medical science, with its present limita¬ 
tions of ignorance and prejudice in such matters, is quite- 
unable to undertake. 

But the co-operation of persons of opposite sexes, who have 
attained to sympneumatic conditions, extends far beyond 
this: they have undertaken no less a task than the recon¬ 
struction of society from its foundations, upon the corner¬ 
stones of purity and co-operation, which must begin by the- 
grouping of individuals socially who are prepared to enter 
upon it, under the conditions of self-sacrifice already described,, 
and who will have the courage to face the unholy conjectures* 
the bitter sneers, the unjust criticism, and the violent opposi¬ 
tion, not only of the world at large, but of their own friends 
and families. Once again, the man or the woman who has 
determined to abandon the profession of being a Christian for 
the reality, must be prepared to share the real Christian s fate;, 
for the time has come, which was predicted by Christ when 
His disciples asked, “ What shall be the sign when all these- 
things shall be fulfilled?” and Jesus, answering them, began, 


350 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


to say, “ Take heed^lest any one deceive you; for many shall 
-come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive 
many.” Those who have come in the name of Christ, and 
have deceived many, are all the existing Churches and sects 
in Christendom without exception; until the conscience of 
the whole civilised world has been drugged by their dogmas 
•and their formularies. The result of that conscience being 
•quickened, must inevitably lead to the overthrow of the ec- 
clesiasticisms which have held it so long in bondage, and to 
the discovery that the Christ whom they proclaimed was a 
:false ,one. 

But inasmuch as the infernals are intrenched more 
strongly in the Church than anywhere else, and can fight 
against the true Church more effectively under the banner of 
the false one than under any other, the hostility of the priest¬ 
hood and ministry in all countries will be more bitter against 
those who are struggling for purity, than that of any other 
•class. It will not be in music-halls or on race-courses that 
this effort will be denounced, but in cathedrals and con¬ 
venticles ; and the true Christ again will find His home, not 
among the Scribes and Pharisees, but among the publicans 
and sinners. 

What is stranger still is, that, while materialists are treated 
with comparative tolerance by these Christians and dignitaries 
■of the Church, who lavish the highest ecclesiastical honours 
they can bestow upon the burial, and read funeral eulogies 
■over the grave, of the prophet of a No-God like Mr Darwin, 
they will furiously resent the teaching of those who believe 
that the mission of Christ was to introduce into the world the 
purity of the Divine Feminine; and they will traduce all 
who should offer themselves, under a guidance which they 
believe to be divine, to be the instruments for its introduc¬ 
tion to fallen man; because it is not possible to do so with¬ 
out violating the conventional relations of the sexes which 
impurity has established, and denouncing Churches which 
cement adulterous marriages. But those who have received 
the Sympneuma by the channel of Christ and the Holy 
Pneurna need not fear, for He says: “When they shall 

* lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand 

* what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate; for what- 


THE SYMPNEUMATIC CHRIST. 


351 


* soever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for 

* it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Pneuma. How the 

* brother shall betray the brother to death, and the father 
< the son; and children shall rise up against their parents, 
■* and shall cause them to be put to death. And ye shall 

be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that shall 
4 endure to the end, the same shall be saved.” 

That these prophecies did not refer alone to the persecu¬ 
tions which the disciples were afterwards called upon to suffer, 
is evident from the context. 

The reason why the true Christ has been lost is, because 
the Churches have never understood the full significance of 
the fact that He alone, of all the world’s great teachers and 
regenerators, of all the founders of religion, was never mar¬ 
ried, and preserved Himself wholly untainted as to the flesh. 

This was because the true order of the relation which 
-should subsist between the sexes had been reversed by their 
•separation; and as He contained enfolded within Himself His 
•own feminine complement, or Sympneuma, all other women 
were to Him, like all other men, objects of His disinterested 
love and compassion. The restoration of the sympneumatic 
union involves, sooner or later, the restoration of the divine 
.conditions of procreation ; but herein lies a great mystery, the 
revelation of which is reserved for One who has retained the 
•Christ-like condition, concerning which it is not expedient to 
write further at present than to say, that the period when 
-this revelation will be made does not seem very remote. But 
before it can be made, it will be necessary for the two or three 
-who have passed away from this earth in full sympneumatic 
'Consciousness, to be reinforced by the addition of others now 
.alive who have attained the same state. 

As it was impossible for Christ to send the “ Helper ” until 
He died, and ascended into the invisible region of our uni¬ 
verse, there to form a new atomic combination and generate a 
new force, which took form in the descent of the fiery cloven 
tongues, so now we, who are called upon to prepare the way 
tor a second and more triumphant descent of the Word-made- 
Hesh, as Conqueror and as Bridegroom, must expect soon to 
be summoned to strengthen the battery of sympneumatic life 
beyond the tomb. We are like mariners swimming from a 


352 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


wreck to the shore with life-ropes; and it is not until sym- 
pneumatic groups, more numerous than yet exist, are formed 
both in the seen and the unseen, that the next revelation can 
be made. 

There is no more profound delusion than that which pre¬ 
vails in certain quarters, that a crisis is at hand which will 
sweep all humanity from the face of the earth, except a 
chosen few, who will be preserved immortal amid the general 
crash. A crisis is undoubtedly at hand, but it will not be 
catastrophic or outside of natural law. It will consist simply 
in the further development and collision of those forces which 
are already exhibiting themselves in unknown and startling 
phenomena; and the day will no doubt come when the con¬ 
ditions of death will undergo the change predicted in the 
Bible, and when it will be swallowed up in victory. 

But this cannot be until the victory has been won; and the 
victory cannot be won until the forces on the other side of 
the grave have established sympneumatic connection with 
those on this side; until both have learned thoroughly how to 
co-operate with each other, and have acquired the necessary 
combined potency. For any man who has attained sym¬ 
pneumatic conditions, or who thinks he has attained them, to- 
desire immortality, or to suppose that he has already achieved 
it, is to nurse himself in a delusion as ignorant as it is selfish. 
It is one which has been projected into the minds of those 
who are in close psychic rapport with the lower region of our 
universe, and is suggested by the certainty they have acquired 
of an approaching collision between the forces, hitherto latent,, 
which are now developing with such remarkable energy. 

To this collision I referred in the introductory chapter to 
this book ; and in a subsequent chapter I quoted the testimony 
of medical science in France, to the effect that these forces 
had already developed to such an extent, that it had become 
possible by hypnotic suggestion for an operator to arrest the 
vital functions of a patient, and to put an end to natural life. 
Similarly there also resides in those forces latent potencies for 
prolonging it. It is to obtain the control of these potencies 
that the struggle will take place. The effort of the internals 
is to acquire it by pneumatic propulsion and psychic impact 
of atoms, and by the subsequent absorption of the principle 


INSANE DELUSIONS. 


353 


of human vitality into themselves, from those over whom they 
have thus acquired control, whereby they would reinforce the 
electro-magnetic force of their own organisms, and then, by a 
simulation of the sympneumatic descent, connect themselves 
so indissolubly with their victims on earth, that these latter 
would become instruments in their hands for shortening or 
prolonging human life, to suit their own purposes. There are 
those now on earth who are rapidly approaching this condi¬ 
tion, and who have arrived at the conviction—no doubt sin¬ 
cere—that they are not only immortal themselves, but that 
they can control the vitality of others. Of this—which must 
seem in the highest degree fantastic to the general public—I 
have had personal experience, and have got written evidence 
of it in my possession. The fact that the world may call 
them lunatics, does not invalidate the danger of the delusion, 
nor of the insanities to which it may give rise, since, as I have 
shown, men of science have experimentally tested the nature 
of the forces upon which it is based, and have proved that by 
their operation they can either arrest life, or prolong it as they 
are every day doing in several French hospitals, by using them 
for the cure of disease. 

It is to meet this danger that the sympneumatic descent 
has become necessary; but the man who is vitalised by it 
seeks no immortality for himself, nor does he desire to be the 
means of controlling the vitality of others. He knows he has 
become impervious to anti-sympneumatic attack, or to hyp¬ 
notic suggestion from any quarter, whether seen or unseen, 
which can limit the divine freedom within him. He would 
not consciously shorten the life of an agent in this world of 
the powers of darkness, even if he were able to do so, nor 
attempt to prolong his own, by the avoidance of any risk he 
should incur in the service of his Master. 

It is in this that those who have received the true sym¬ 
pneumatic consciousness, can be distinguished from those who 
have only received the infernal simulation of it, or who have 
had it and lost it—that the former have no desire for length 
of days on earth; but, asking only to be God’s instruments, 
place themselves unreservedly in His hands, and are equally 
ready to go or stay. All that they seek is to be shown His 
will, from hour to hour, and to do it effectually. 

Z 


354 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


It is by this earnest effort alone that they can keep their 
lamps trimmed and burning, and clothe themselves in the 
wedding garment; and this wedding garment is the sym- 
pneumatic overlay with which their particles can be clothed 
as effectively in another life as in this; for all, whether they 
be on this earth or not, are invited to the feast of the Bride¬ 
groom and the Bride. “ And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed 
4 are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the 
‘ Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of 
4 God.” 

In the internal meaning of the book of Bevelation, the 
views which have been set forth in the preceding pages may 
be clearly found; though, as much which that book contains 
refers to the future, and some of it conceals mysteries which 
are still veiled, its study can only be pursued under condi¬ 
tions which require long preparation. Nor is it even ex¬ 
pedient that all the results which may have been arrived at 
should be made public, for much that is hidden is too sacred; 
while any attempt to unravel the future by intellectual in¬ 
terpretations of its symbols, springs from a morbid curiosity, 
which will certainly not be gratified by revelations that can 
be relied upon. 

This has been abundantly illustrated by the utter failure 
which has hitherto attended the numerous endeavours that 
have been made to fix dates, and predict political events by 
human interpretation of prophecy, whether in the Old or New 
Testament. 

In attempting, therefore, to unfold the inner meaning of 
such passages as have been shown to me as being appropriate 
to these pages, I shall confine myself to those to which I feel 
most strongly impelled to call the attention of my readers; 
and as it would occupy too much space to quote the entire 
text, I must leave them to do that for themselves. At the 
same time, I would remind them that a mere intellectual 
apprehension is of very little avail; and that, in such matters 
as those dealt with in this book, it is better to reject the 
inspiration it contains, than to think it true as a matter of 
theory, without at once acting upon it. Nor can any one 
judge of its value, one way or another, except those who have 
already subjected themselves to a severe course of moral dis- 


man’s DELATION TO CHRIST. 


355 


cipline, or have inwardly decided to sacrifice all that they 
may find truth. 

Before, however, entering upon this task, I must once more 
refer for confirmation of what has been stated in the fore¬ 
going pages, to the writings of St Paul as well as to the 
Kabbalah. 

The sympneumatic nature of man, and his relation to Christ 
in the twofold quality of his love, is very clearly indicated 
in the 11th chapter of First Corinthians, where the apostle 
says, “ Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, 
neither the woman without the man, in the Lord.” In other 
words, as the Lord contains within Himself the bisexual nature, 
it is not possible for those to be absolutely and completely 
united to Him, who are not themselves similarly united as to 
their masculine and feminine principles. It is not possible 
for the man alone to be in the Lord, nor for the woman alone 
to be in the Lord. They may separately and individually be 
attached to Him by a certain external atomic adhesion, as all 
good people who love Him are; but they can never know the 
bliss of the deep interior atomic interlocking, which seems to 
melt them into His ineffable Personality, unless they come to 
Him as two-in-one; for the masculine cannot unite itself to 
the masculine principle in Him, excepting through its own 
feminine complementary half ; and the feminine cannot unite 
itself to the masculine principle in Him, excepting through 
its own masculine complementary half. This is what is 
meant by the expression “neither is the man without the 
woman, neither is the woman without the man, in the Lord.” 
And he goes on to say, “ For as the woman is of the man, 
even so also is the man by the woman; but all things of God.” 
The two being inextricably interwoven by God, from the day 
that they were created two-in-one by Him. 

The chapter in which these verses occur furnishes a very 
remarkable illustration of the mixed inspirational influx, to 
which I have already alluded as characterising all the earliest 
Christian writings which are assumed to be infallible. The 
apostle is discussing a subject which would seem unaccount¬ 
ably trivial, were it not that a spiritual significance attached 
to it, the nature of which he did not himself fully compre¬ 
hend. The position of woman having become changed by 


356 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


the work which Christ had already done on earth, the 
apostles felt themselves spiritually impressed to change the 
Jewish custom by which the men while they worshipped 
remained covered, while the women were compelled at all 
times to shave their heads—a custom which prevails in or¬ 
thodox Jewish communities to this day. The new order now 
introduced was that the men should worship uncovered, and 
the women allow their hair to grow. 

This was evidently a shock to the Jewish mind, and Paul 
attempts to give an explanation of the reasons which involved 
it, in his Epistle to the Church at Corinth, which doubtless 
contained Jews. His mind, however, was still too deeply 
imbued with the social prejudice which prevailed throughout 
the whole East, and was by no means confined to the Jews, 
of the inferiority of woman, to understand the full significance 
of the change. He considered that the woman being taken 
out of the man stamped her with inferiority, not realising 
that the most interior principle must be in some senses the 
superior, and that her apparent inferiority was in fact the 
result of a previous catastrophe which involved the appear¬ 
ance of man upon our earth under conditions different from 
those which had characterised his previous creation, but which 
in no way affected the broad fact that the Divine Feminine 
must always be equal to the Divine Masculine in God, and 
therefore in all His created beings. A dim consciousness of 
this forces itself upon him, however, when he says, “ But all 
things of God”; and again, “For this cause ought the woman 
to have power on her head because of the angels.” This 
verse has been so utterly enigmatical to the translators, and 
so apparently contradictory to what has preceded it, that they 
have ventured on an explanation in the margin. ** That is,” 
they say, “ a covering, in sign that she is under the power of 
her husband.” Now the meaning of i^ovala, rendered “ power ” 
in the authorised version, is really “ authority.” By no pos¬ 
sible licence or contortion of terms can it be made to mean 
“ covering.” Still less is there anything to justify an explan¬ 
ation which is in palpable opposition to the words of the 
text. There can be no better illustration of the pride and 
ignorance with which man, even to our own day, insists upon 
woman’s subjection to him, than that he should presume to 


THE RELATION OF MAN TO WOMAN. 


357 


put in a marginal note, which in the minds of the ignorant 
has almost the authority of the text itself, in explanation of 
the words, “For this cause ought woman to have authority 
on her head because of the angels,” this means, “ A covering, 
in sign that she is under the power of her husband.” Had 
women been the translators, the explanation would have been 
different. The true internal significance is, that woman is 
the connecting-link between man and the angels, and that it 
is through her affectional atomic union with them that a 
channel is formed by which alone the Divine Feminine can 
descend to man; and the reason why the apostles were 
divinely impressed to forbid the women to shave their heads 
was, in the inverse sense, analogous to that which caused 
Delilah to shave the head of Samson when she wished to 
deprive him of his strength. There is a certain quality which 
pertains to the electricity that resides in hair, as to its essen¬ 
tial atoms, of which, if I spoke further, I should only excite, 
still more than I have already done, the ridicule and scepti¬ 
cism of men of science, for it is far beyond their ken, which 
renders it an important factor in the transmission of force 
derived from those whom Paul calls “ the angels,” and to 
tamper with this transmitting medium of electric magnetic 
force is to limit woman’s power, and therefore her authority 
in her own special sphere of operations, over man. 

But there is another far more internal meaning connected 
with the word “ hair ” as applied to woman, which will appear 
when we come to consider a passage in the chapter I am 
about to quote from the Kabbalah, “ Concerning the Bride of 
the Son, or ‘ Lesser Countenance,’ ” which also throws remark¬ 
able light upon the inner meaning of the Apocalypse. From 
this it will be seen in what manner the hair of the woman 
signifies the male Sympneumata, and why the expression 
of St Paul in a previous verse, that “ the head of the woman 
is the man,” does not imply his lordship over the woman, 
but signifies the nature of his organic relationship to her, 
which is that of the intellect; while of him it might in like 
manner be said, “the heart of the man is the woman,” in 
allusion to the affectional character of her functions towards 
him. It is probable, however, that Paul himself was too 
much impregnated with the prejudices of his race on the 


358 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


subject fully to apprehend the true significance of his own 
words. 

I have already said that, according to kabbalistic interpre¬ 
tation, the four letters of the Tetragrammaton, IHVH, which 
compose the word Jehovah, indicate the Father, the Mother, 
the Son, and the Bride or Son’s Wife—the two latter, YH, 
being emanations of the former. And here I would remark 
that Christ, in whom the Bride was enfolded, was an emana¬ 
tion from and manifestation of YH in the sense—modified 
by the peculiar circumstances attending His birth—in which 
we can all become manifestations of YH when once we have 
acquired the twofold nature with which our Lord came to 
endow humanity; and to that degree, and only to that degree 
was He divine. The ineffable divinity of IHYH, in His four¬ 
fold comprehensiveness, it is beyond the grasp of the human 
mind to fathom. 

This being so, I will quote the dark sayings of the Book of 
the Lesser Assembly on the subject:— 

“Unto His (the Son’s) back adhereth closely a ray of 

* vehement splendour, and it flameth forth, and formeth a 

* skull concealed on every side. 

“ And thus descendeth the light of the two brains, and is 

* figured forth therein. 

“ And She (the Bride) adhereth to the side of the Male; 
‘ wherefore also she is called my dove, my perfect one 

* (Cant. v. 2). Bead not ‘ Thamathi,’ my perfect one, but 
‘ * Theomathi,’ my twin-sister, more applicably.” Therefore 
after the baptism of Christ by John, the Divine Feminine 
was seen descending in the form of a dove. 

“The hairs of the Woman contain colours upon colours, as 

* it is written (Cant. vii. 5 ). ‘ The hair of thy head like 

‘ purple.’ But herewith is Geburah, severity, connected in 
‘ the five severities (i.e., which are symbolised in the numerical 
‘ value , 5, of the letter H, final of IHVH, which is the Bride), 
‘ and the Woman is extended on Her side, and is applied to 

* the side of the Male.” 

This passage—and indeed the same may be said of the 
whole Kabbalah,—contains arcana referring to Christ in His 
conjoined Masculine and Feminine nature, which has been 
concealed from the most learned students of that Book of 


KABBALISTIC INTERPRETATION. 


359 


Mystery, owing to the veil which hid from their view the 
true nature of that wonderful Personality. The symbolism 
contained in the words “ the hairs of the Woman which con¬ 
tain colours upon colours/’ will be understood when we refer 
to what is said of the hair of her Spouse in the chapter “ con¬ 
cerning the hair of the Son or Lesser Countenance,” p. 307. 

" Prom the skull of the head (of the Divine Son, the Spouse) 

* depend all those chiefs and leaders (otherwise all those 
‘ thousands and tens of thousands), and also from the locks of 
‘ the hair, which are black, and mutually bound together, and 

* which mutually cohere. 

“ But they adhere unto the Supernal Light from the Father 

* AB, which surroundeth His Head ( i.e ., is the Son’s), and unto 

* the Brain, which is illuminated from the Father. 

“ Thencefrom, even from the Light which surroundeth His 

* Head ( i.e., the Son’s), from the Mother AIM A, proceed long 

* locks upon locks of hair. 

“ And all adhere unto and are bound together with those 

* locks which have their connection with the Father.” 

The chiefs and leaders spoken of above, as being thousands 
and tens of thousands, symbolised by the locks of hair which 
are black, are the male sympneumatic complements of earthly 
women, as the hairs of the Bride, containing colours upon 
colours, are the female sympneumatic complements of earthly 
men here, which all depend originally from the Great Father 
and Mother, Two-in-One—AB and AIMA; “ the colours ” 
are the germinating essences, and the five severities .are the 
evils which afflicted the world, because the balance has been 
lost in it owing to the absence of the Divine Feminine prin¬ 
ciple, the separation of the sexes, and the inferiority in which 
woman has been placed, and which is symbolised by the 
words, “and the Woman is extended on Her side, and is 
extended by the side of the Male,” and these severities will 
continue until, in the words of the next sentence, “ She is 
separated from His side, and cometh unto Him, so that She 
may be conjoined with Him face to face.” It was to prepare 
the way for this union that Christ appeared on earth. There¬ 
fore continues the Kabbalah, “ And when they are conjoined 

* together, they appear to be only one body. 

“ Hence we learn that the Masculine, taken alone, appeareth 


360 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


4 to be only half the body; so that all the mercies are half; 
4 and thus also is it with the Feminine. But when they are 

* joined together the (two together) appear to form only one 

* body. And it is so. 

“ So also here. When the Male is joined with the Female, 
4 they both constitute one complete body, and all the universe 
4 is in a state of happiness, because all things receive blessing 
4 from their perfect body. And this is an arcanum.” 

The arcanum is simply the sympneumatic descent, and 
herein is its secret revealed—for it will result in the union 
on earth of the halves hitherto divided, whereby man will 
regain his lost condition. Nevertheless, this arcanum has 
never before been revealed to Jewish students of the Kabba¬ 
lah. Now will commence the Sabbatic year spoken of therein 
as follows:— 

“And therefore it is said ‘Tetragrammaton (IHVH, or 
4 Jehovah) blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it.’ For 
4 then all things are found {to exist) in the perfect body; for 
4 Matronitha (i.e., the Inferior Mother , the Bride) is joined unto 

* the King, and is found to form one body with Him. And 
4 therefore are there found to be blessings on this day. And 
4 hence that which is not both male and female together, is 
4 called half a body. Now no blessing can rest upon a muti- 
4 lated and defective being, but only upon a perfect place and 
4 upon a perfect being, and not at all in an incomplete being. 

44 And a semi-complete being cannot live for ever, neither 
4 can it receive blessing for ever. The beauty of the Female 
4 is completed by the beauty of the Male. And now have 
4 we established these facts (concerning the perfect equality 
4 of Male and Female), and they are made known unto the 
4 companions. 

44 With this Woman (the Bride) are connected all those things 
4 which are below: from Her do they receive their nourish- 
4 ment, and from Her do they receive blessing; and She is 
4 called the Mother of them all. 

44 Like as a mother containeth the body (of her child before 
4 birth), and that whole body deriveth its nourishment from 
4 her (otherwise containeth a garden, and the whole garden 
4 is from her), thus is She unto all the other inferiors. 

44 It is written (Prov. vii. 4), 4 Say unto Chokmah (wisdom). 


THE BRIDE. 


361 


■* Thou art my sister/ For there is given one Chokmah (male), 

* and there is also another Chokmah (female).” 

“And this Woman is called the Lesser Chokmah, in respect 

* of the other. 

“And therefore it is written (Cant. viii. 8), ‘We have a little 
‘ sister, and she hath no breasts/ 

“ For in this exile (i.e., separated from the King) she appear- 

* eth unto us to be our little sister. At first, indeed, she is 
< small; but she becometh greater and greater, until she be- 

* cometh the spouse whom the King taketh unto Himself.” 

Then is she the Bride, the Lamb’s Wife—the city of the 
Hew Jerusalem arrayed as a Bride to meet her Husband, for 
this is the restitution of all things. 

We will now turn to the book of Revelation, in which the 
ultimate triumph of this Divine Feminine principle on earth 
is described. 


362 


CHAPTER XXII. 


THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CHAPTERS OF THE BOOK OF REVELA¬ 
TION INTERPRETED—THE EFFECT OF CHRIST’S MISSION TO EARTH 
UPON THE UPPER INVISIBLE REGION OF OUR WORLD—CONCEALMENT* 
OF THE DIVINE FEMININE—THE TWO WITNESSES—THE FUNCTIONS OP 
JOHN THE BAPTIST—HIS RELATION TO CHRIST—TEMPORARY TRIUMPH 
OF THE INFERNAL FEMININE—THE BEAST, ANTI-CHRISTENDOM, OR 
THE GENTILE CHURCH—THE MARK OF THE BEAST, THE FALSE CROSS. 
—MAN’S PRESENT RELATION TO CHRIST. 

That portion of the book of Revelation, of which the inner 
meaning bears more particularly upon the subject of the pres¬ 
ent volume, commences with the 12th chapter. 

“ The mother, the woman clothed with the sun,” who was 
“ with child and pained to be delivered,” is the Divine 
Feminine. 

The dragon, waiting “ to devour her child as soon as it was 
born,” is the Prince of the fallen region of the previous world,, 
and of the Siddim. 

The child which was “ brought forth,” and “ caught up unto 
God and His throne,” was Christ. 

The “ wilderness,” into which the woman fled, and “ was 
sustained for 1260 days, in a place prepared for her,” is 
the hearts of the saints, in which she has found refuge and 
sustenance since her descent, through Christ, into the human 
organism. 

The “war in heaven” between “Michael and his angels’ 3 ' 
and “ the dragon and his angels,” was the struggle between 
the Seraphim and the Siddim over the Divine Feminine, in 
the invisible part of our universe, to preserve its atomic 
elements in the organisms of those who, having received it 
here, had passed away from earth. 


TRIUMPH OF THE SERAPHIM. 


363 - 


“ And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called 
the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the world; he was cast, 
out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him,” 
signifies the victory of the Seraphim, and the final expulsion 
of the Siddim from the upper invisible region of our universe,, 
and the transference of the struggle to earth. 1 

This was what Christ meant when He said, “ I saw Satan, 
like lightning, fall from heaven.” 

“ And I heard a loud voice saying, How is come the salva- 

* tion, and the force, and the kingdom of our God, and the- 

* authority of His Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is 

* cast down, which accused them before our God day and 

* night,” is the song of triumph of the Seraphim at the sal¬ 
vation, which had been accomplished through the mission 
of Christ to earth, of the upper region of the invisible world 
in which the supremacy of Christ, as ruler, is henceforth 
established. 

“ And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by 
the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives 
unto the death,” describes the process by which the early 
Christian martyrs, who had received into their organisms the 
atomic elements of the Divine Feminine, which had been dis¬ 
tributed throughout humanity by the actual blood of Christy 
redistributed them by their own death as martyrs. This has 
given rise to the saying that “ the blood of the martyrs is the 
seed of the Church.” 

“ Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them,” 
signifies the completion of Christ’s work so far as regards our 
own invisible upper world. 

“Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea! for 
the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because 
he knoweth that he hath but a short time,” indicates the 
violence of the struggle which was now to take place over the- 
Divine Feminine on earth. 


1 The whole of this combat is described in the Babylonian mythology in the- 
legend narrating the conflict between Bel or Merodach and Tiamat the Dragon 
of Darkness (Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 102) ; and indeed many most inter¬ 
esting analogies can be traced between the myths of Accad and Babylonia, the- 
Dhammapada of the Buddhists—in which a city resembling the New Jerusalem, 
is described—and the Revelation. 


•364 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


“And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the 
-earth, he persecuted the woman which had brought forth the 
man-child,” signifies the infernal attack made to prevent the 
introduction on earth of the Divine Feminine. 

“ And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, 

4 that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where 
< she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from 
* the face of the serpent,” signifies the means which were 
•adopted to conceal the Divine Feminine from the internals; 
and indicates the nature and period of duration of the 
struggle. 

The next two verses contain arcana, as to the method of the 
infernal attack and the means employed to meet it. 

“ And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to 
make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the com¬ 
mandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ,” 
indicates that the infernal attack was especially concentrated 
upon those few who had “ the testimony of Jesus Christ ”—in 
•other words, had received the atomic elements of the Divine 
Feminine distributed by Christ into their organisms. 

This vision terminates here. It must be remembered that 
the order in which the different visions occur in the book, have 
no reference to any relation which they bear to each other in 
order of time. 

The next vision is that of the Beast, who rose from the sea, 
■** having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his heads the 
names of blasphemy.” 

This beast symbolises the infernal lust-principle introduced 
by the Siddim into humanity, with the six other deadly 
•sins, at the period known as “the Fall.” The source from 
which this beast derived his origin is signified in the words, 

And the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great 
•authority.” 

“ And I saw one of his heads wounded as it were to death; 
-and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered 
after the beast,” signifies the wound which this lust-principle 
received by the advent of Christ into the world, and the sub¬ 
sequent healing of the wound by the suppression of the Divine 
Feminine. The worship of the dragon by the world, the power 
he exercised, and the evil that he wrought, are described in 


THE TWO WITNESSES. 


365 


the following verses. The duration of his reign is given as 
three years and a half, which is half of the mystical number 
seven, that signifies perfection, and which corresponds to the 
three days and a half during which the dead bodies of the two 
witnesses were to “ lie in the street of the great city, which 
spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord) 
was crucified ” (chapter xi. 8). 

Here I feel compelled to make a digression concerning: 
these two witnesses, and the relation they bear to the work 
of Christ. 

The two witnesses represented typically by Enoch and 
Elijah are the Sympneuma, or complementary being which, 
completes man’s bisexuality, and the Holy Spirit, the Pneuma* 
or Divine Feminine, through the operation of which the* 
Sympneuma—so called because it is the companion of the* 
Pneuma—is united to man. Of Enoch we read that “he* 
walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.” This- 
signifies that traces of sympneumatic life lingered in the- 
world, notwithstanding the fatal wounds it had received, 
first, by the disobedience of woman, and secondly, by the 
slaughter of a vital principle in it, typified by Abel, until the 
race called “ Enoch,” wh§n it was finally withdrawn from the 
human organism. The races in the invisible world, prior to 
this date, who passed away from this earth in sympneumatic 
conditions, however imperfect, are differently constituted 
atomically from all those who passed into it subsequently* 
and remained therefore as a witness of that sympneumatic 
life which again descended to earth in the person of Christ. 

The whole history of Elijah, which, if the events recorded 
ever really happened, would be one of the grossest cruelty 
and vengeance, is in reality pregnant in its inner sense with 
the most profound spiritual significance; for the operation of 
the Divine Feminine is concealed in the legendary history of 
the prophets, but more especially in that of Elijah, who was. 
charged with a fuller measure of it than any man had been* 
from the days of Moses to those of John the Baptist. The 
pneuma, of which Elisha is said to have received a double 
portion, differed in quality from that which Elijah carried 
with him on his departure from earth, which was of the fiery 
potency which characterises the ardours of a high degree of 


366 


SCIENTIFIC KELIGION. 


the Divine Feminine, and which, reinforced by elements re¬ 
ceived from earth, returned to the invisible world, thence to 
be once again projected into this one through the organism 
of the Baptist. Hence we find all the most striking episodes 
of Elijah’s career accompanied by a fiery manifestation. 

It is fire from heaven which consumes the sacrifice on Car¬ 
mel ; it is fire from heaven which consumes successively two 
captains of fifty with their men; it was after a great strong 
wind, and an earthquake and fire, that he heard the still small 
voice; and it was in a chariot of fire that he disappeared from 
the gaze of Elisha. Therefore he typifies the fiery pneuma 
•of God, whose purifying flame is about once more to touch 
the hearts of men, either to kindle in them divine ardours, or 
■to devastate them and lay them waste. 

We read that the dead bodies of the two witnesses, the 
■Sympneuma and the Pneuma, were to lie for three days and a 
half “ in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called 
Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.” The 
■Sympneuma was trampled upon by the sin of Sodom; 1 the 
Pneuma was crushed out of man’s consciousness in the early 
"Church by the dogma of the Trinity, which owes its origin to 
Egypt. 2 But in its larger sense the “ great city ” signifies the 
.gigantic imposture called “ Christendom,” where our Lord is 
being daily crucified, and in whose streets the dead bodies of 
the two witnesses are still lying. 

The representative of Elijah was John the Baptist, and it 
is very important that his relationship to Christ should be 
understood. 

The Gospel of St John introduces him as a “man from 
Cod,” or, as the Greek preposition 7 rapa with the genitive 
implies, “from alongside of” God. 

The angel Gabriel, in announcing his birth to his earthly 
father, Zacharias, says: “ Thou shalt call his name John, and 

* there shall be joy and gladness to thee; and many shall 

* rejoice at his descent [that is, the source from whence he shall 

* come]. For he shall be great in the presence of Jehovah, 

* and he shall by no means drink wine or intoxicating liquor; 

* and he shall be filled with a holy pneuma, even from his 

* mother’s womb. And he shall turn many of the sons of 

1 See Appendix. 2 g ee Appendix. 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 


367 


* Israel to Jehovah their God. And he shall proceed in His 
4 presence, in Elijah’s presence and force, to turn the hearts 
4 of parents to their children, and unbelievers by means of the 
4 intelligence of just ones, to make for Jehovah a people fur- 
4 nished ” (or constructed as a dwelling-place), Luke i. 13-17. 
These words are almost textually those of the prophet Malachi 
predicting the same event. 

“John” signifies the “gift of God” “Many shall rejoice 
at his descent,” signifies that the progenitor of John in the 
invisible world being Elijah, the potency of the pneuma in 
him would cause many to rejoice who came under the influ¬ 
ence of the Baptist. 

Although true and complete sympneumatic union does not 
fully exist in the invisible part of our world, among the de¬ 
scendants of races which have passed into it since its final ex¬ 
tinction on earth in the Enoch race, yet there is a degree in 
which it exists, which is awaiting completion, through the co¬ 
operation of earthly mortals, who contain elements necessary 
thereto, “for they without us could not be made perfect.” 
The fact that some have passed recently into the invisible 
world, who had attained to sympneumatic consciousness here, 
has already operated powerfully on sympneumatic conditions 
there; but John, although of such high descent, came into 
the world through human parentage, and his progenitor— 
though filled with so large a measure of the Divine Feminine 
—had not attained to full sympneumatic consciousness. Never¬ 
theless, John proceeded in Jehovah’s presence, and in Elijah’s 
pneuma and force; the pneuma being the feminine, and the 
force the masculine element, by means of which he was gen¬ 
erated through Elijah. Hence, too, from his mother’s womb, 
he was to be filled with the Divine Feminine, and to be called 
the “ gift of God.” The important significance of this appel¬ 
lation was attested by the dumbness of Zacharias, and which 
was removed as soon as he wrote, “ His name is John.” 

“ To turn the hearts of the parents to their children,” signi¬ 
fies the yearning of the saints who form the pneumatic chain, 
over their children whom they are labouring for here; “ and 
unbelievers by means of the intelligence of the just ones,” 
signifies the effect of inspirational impression by the saints 
on the hearts and minds of unbelievers. 


368 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


“To make ready a people furnished,” signifies that the 
effect of John’s advent would be to prepare men to receive 
the sympneumatic life, which would be distributed by Christ; 
and indicates also the power of the Divine Feminine, when 
operating in the hearts of men, to make them wise unte 
salvation. 

Therefore it was, when the disciples who were present at 
the transfiguration asked Christ, saying, “ Why say the scribes 
that Elias must first come ? ” He answered and said unto- 
them, “ Elias truly shall first come, and shall restore all things. 

* But I say unto you, that Elias has come already, and they 

* knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. 

* Likewise shall the Son of man suffer also of them. Then 
‘ His disciples understood that He spake unto them of John 

* the Baptist.” 

These disciples were at the time under the influence of a. 
very powerful descent of the Divine Feminine, which had over¬ 
shadowed them on the occasion of Moses and Elias appearing 
with Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration. The effect of 
this remarkable event was not only to charge them with the 
Divine Feminine, but to reinforce the elements which Christ 
contained in His own body, prior to their distribution into- 
nature; therefore Moses and Elias, who appeared “ in glory,’* 
or in an outward manifestation of the Divine Feminine, 
“ spake of His decease which He should accomplish at Jeru¬ 
salem ; ” and this influence was so powerful that “ Peter said 
‘ unto Jesus, Master, it is good for us to be here; and let us 
‘ make three tabernacles, one for Thee, and one for Moses, and 
‘ one for Elias, not knowing what he said.” The tabernacle 
was, as we know, the abode of the Shechinah—one of the 
Hebrew terms for the Divine Feminine—and this utterance 
was forced from his unconscious lips by its presence at the 
moment within him. The visible evidence of which was “ that 
while he thus spake, there came a cloud and overshadowed 
them, and they feared as they entered into the cloud; ” and 
from the cloud was made the same announcement which ac¬ 
companied the descent of the dove on the occasion of Christ’s- 
baptism, “ This is my beloved Son; hear Him.” 

It was this perceptible influence which radiated from 
the principle with which Elijah and John the Baptist had 


THE BAPTISTS RELATION TO CHRIST. 


369 


been filled, that invested the personality of Christ with so 
much mystery among the Jews, so that when He asked His 
disciples, “ Saying, Whom say the people that I am ? They 
‘ answering said, John the Baptist; but some say Elias, and 

* others say that one of the old prophets is risen again. He 
‘ said unto them, But whom say ye that I am ? Peter answer- 

* ing, said, The Christ [or anointed] of G-od.” He then goes 
on to describe the nature of the sufferings He will be called 
upon to endure in order to fulfil His lofty mission, and strictly 
charges them to keep the revelations He makes to them on 
this mysterious subject a secret. 

The parentage of Christ in the invisible world is hidden 
from us. All that is shown to us is that He was generated 
directly by the Seraphim, in complete sympneumatic biunity. 
This is indicated by the terms of the angelic announcement 
to Mary, who was told that a “ holy pneuma ” should come 
upon her, and that “ force of the Highest ” should over¬ 
shadow her; the pneuma and force being the Divine Eem- 
inine and Masculine principles respectively. It was by 
means of this powerful bisexual concentration upon a pre¬ 
pared virginal organism that, as I have already described, 
Christ’s descent into the world without a human father was 
effected. 

Nevertheless, before His sympneumatic complement could 
internally manifest herself to Him, it was necessary for cer¬ 
tain atomic combinations to be made by elements derived 
from a human organism, specially filled with divine pneu¬ 
matic life for the purpose. These elements were contained in 
the organism of John. It was the pneuma residing in John’s 
yet unborn personality which recognised the superior sym¬ 
pneumatic personality of Christ Himself, at the time under¬ 
going conception in the womb of the Yirgin Mary, which 
caused the babe to leap in Elisabeth’s womb, and called forth 
the exclamation, “ Blessed art thou among women, and blessed 
‘ is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me that 
« the mother of my lord should come to me ? For, lo, as soon 
‘ as the voice of thy salutation sounded in my ears, the babe 
‘ leaped in my womb for joy.” 

It was to effect this atomic combination, that it was neces¬ 
sary for Christ to be baptised of John, and when the latter 

2 A 


370 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


remonstrated, saying, “I have need to be baptised of thee, 
comest thou to me ?” “Jesus answering said, Suffer it to, be 
so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.” 
Christ needed baptism by the Pneuma to develop the full 
consciousness of the Sympneuma in Him, which descended in 
the form of a dove. When this had taken place, John recog¬ 
nised the sympneumatic nature of Christ at once; for when 
the'Jews came to him, pointing to Christ as a rival who was 
also baptising—though there were good internal reasons why 
He should not baptise, but only His disciples—“John an- 

* swered and said, A man can take unto himself nothing ex- 

* cept it be given him from heaven. Ye yourselves bear me 

* witness, that 1 said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent 
‘ before Him. He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but 
‘ the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth 
‘ him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. This 

* my joy therefore is fulfilled.” It is impossible to have a 
clearer testimony to the sympneumatic nature of Christ, and 
the completion of His bisexuality, than is afforded by this 
allusion to His bride by the only man then alive capable of 
apprehending this profound mystery. 

Christ himself recognises His twofold character when He 
says, to His disciples, “ Can the children of the bride-chamber 
‘ mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them ? but the 
‘ days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from 
4 them, then shall they fast.” In this saying He foresees that 
the children of the bride-chamber, whom He called by that 
name because He was preparing them to receive sympneu¬ 
matic life, would soon lose the slight consciousness of it they 
possessed, when His presence was removed from them, and 
mourn and fast for lack of the vivifying principle which that 
life imparted ; and this in fact they did, only sustaining them¬ 
selves by the delusive hope of His reappearance among them 
during their lifetime. 

We are now in a position to understand the meaning of 
Christ’s statement, “ Verily I say unto you, Among men that 

* are born of women there has not risen a greater than John 
‘ the Baptist; yet he that is least in the kingdom of heaven 

* is greater than he.” John the Baptist entered this world 
endowed with a loftier invisible parentage than any human 


RESURRECTION OF THE TWO WITNESSES. 371 


being who had preceded him; but inasmuch as he lacked the 
Sympneuma, he failed on earth in his biune perfection, and 
the least of all the sympneumatic subjects of the kingdom of 
heaven must be greater than the greatest of those who have 
not yet entered into sympneumatic conditions. That John 
recognised this most fully, is evident not only from the words 
I have already quoted, but from his saying, “ I indeed baptise 

* you with water unto repentance; but He that cometh after 

* me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear. 

* He shall baptise you with the Holy Pneuma and with fire.” 
It is this baptism with fire that every one of us, who are 
struggling to enter into that condition which John had not 
attained, must be baptised with; and it is that Holy Pneuma, 
through whose operation alone we can regain the lost image 
of our Maker, that we must invoke. 

It was the Divine Feminine, which so powerfully impreg¬ 
nated the nature of John, that aroused against him the fury 
of the infernal feminine principle which infested Herodias 
and her daughter Salome, and caused them to contrive the 
beheadal of the Baptist, in order to secure the withdrawal 
from the earth of the Divine Feminine potency which resided 
in him. 

This tragedy was followed shortly afterwards by the cruci¬ 
fixion of Christ, and the two witnesses lay dead in the streets 
of the great city. But the time is accomplished, and the hour 
of the second woe is come, when we are told that “ the Spirit 
of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their 
feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them.” 

The final catastrophe is described in a few words, when 
the seventh angel sounded, and there were “ great voices in 
‘ heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the 

* kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ; and He shall reign 

* for ever and ever.” 

But a great deal is to happen between the. resuscitation of 
the two witnesses and this glorious climax, and in order to 
apprehend it, we must return to the chapter in the Revelation, 
from which we have digressed. 

While the witnesses are lying in the streets, the dragon is 
reigning, and the fourth and three following verses describe 
the triumph of the lust-principle on earth, and the worship 


372 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


of it by all those “ whose names are not written in the book 
of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.’* 
This indicates that from the time when our universe eman¬ 
ated from the previous one, it was foreseen that its redemp¬ 
tion could only be accomplished through the means that were 
then provided in the person of Christ. 

“ He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he 
that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. 
Here is the patience and the faith of the saints,” signifies 
that it will also be their final triumph. 

“ And I beheld another beast coming out of the earth; and 
he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.” 
This second beast signifies the Antichrist, which Christen¬ 
dom has represented to this day. This beast is a false Christ; 
therefore it is said to be like a lamb. His two horns signify 
lust and pride; but his voice is the voice of Satan. 

“ And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before 
him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein 
to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed,” 
signifies that the world was apparently as much under in¬ 
fernal influence, after Christ’s advent, as before, and as much 
a slave to the lust-principle; for it was the unfaithfulness of 
the early Christian Church which healed the deadly wound 
of the beast. 1 

The remaining six verses of this chapter contain arcana, 
which I would gladly have been spared interpreting; but the 
pressure upon me has been so strong not to shrink from what 
has been presented to me, however unpalatable it may be to 
some, that I have no alternative but to obey it. 

“ And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come 
‘ down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, and 
‘ deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by means of those 
‘ miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; 
‘ saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should 
‘ make an image, which had a wound by the sword, and did 
* live,’’—signifies that the Christian ecclesiastical organisations 
which sprang up on the ruins of Christ’s teaching, by the 
suppression of all its inner meaning, and the perversion of its 
outer sense for sacerdotal purposes, speedily began to prosti- 
1 See Appendix. 


THE MARK OF THE BEAST. 


373 


tute their holy office by imposing upon the popular imagina¬ 
tion by so-called miracles, and such superstitious practices as 
may be witnessed in the Greek and Eoman Churches to this 
day—using the sacred authority to cover or enforce the vilest 
crimes of cruelty, ambition, lust, and avarice, and setting up 
the emblem of Christ’s death as an object of worship. Banners 
bearing the cross of Christ were flaunted over armies engaged 
in bloody wars waged in His name—as, for instance, at the 
time of the Crusades; false relics of the cross were scattered 
broadcast over Christendom as objects of worship, and the 
ignorant masses prostrated themselves before them in adora¬ 
tion ; processions of priests bearing crucifixes led hundreds of 
victims to be burnt at the stake in the name of Christ. When¬ 
ever a crime was to be perpetrated by the Church, whether 
Eastern or Western, the cross was exalted, as furnishing the 
warrant for it; and the body and blood of Christ were thus, so 
to speak, trampled in the mire in effigy by the very persons 
who believed that, every time the sacrament was administered, 
that body and that blood underwent a miraculous change, 
which enabled them to eat the one and drink the other. 

“ And He had power to give life unto the image of the beast 
< that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that 
* as many as would not worship the image of the beast should 
4 be killed.” 

The power to speak, with which the image of the beast was 
thus endowed, signifies the abominations which have been 
perpetrated in the shape of dogmas under the claim of in¬ 
fallibility, the tyranny which has been exercised by Papal 
bulls, and the profanity which has suggested that the cross 
gave any man authority to assume the title of Christ’s vice¬ 
gerent on earth. The image of the beast, then, signifies the 
false Churches of the false Christ throughout so-called Chris¬ 
tendom. 

“ And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, 
4 to receive a mark into their right hands or on their fore- 
4 heads; and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had 
4 the name of the beast or the number of the name.” 

The mark of the beast on the forehead signifies the false 
cross made at baptism, and the mark of the beast into the 
right hand signifies the sign of the false cross. This spurious 


374 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


cross has for eighteen centuries been the trade-mark of anti- 
Christendom. No salvation was worth anything unless it had 
received its brand. Its devotees are taught that out of the 
Church there is no salvation ; that “ two sacraments are neces¬ 
sary thereto—Baptism and the Supper of the Lord; ” and 
that “ they that have done evil, shall go into everlasting fire. 

* This is the Catholic faith; which except a man believe faith- 
‘ fully, he cannot be saved. Glory be to the Father, and to 
‘ the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.” 1 

But the Calvinists vie with the Romanists in the cruelty 
and bigotry of their creed, as will appear from the following 
quotations from the ‘ Presbyterian Confession of Faith *:— 

“ Although the light of Nature, and the works of creation 

* and Providence, do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and 

* power of God as to leave man inexcusable, yet they are not 

* sufficient to give that knowledge of God and of His will 

* which is necessary to salvation. . . . 

“ By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, 
‘ some men and angels are predestined unto everlasting life,. 
‘ and others foreordained to everlasting death. These angels 

* and men, thus predestined and foreordained, are particu- 
‘ larly and unchangeably designed, and their number is so 
‘ certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or 

* diminished. . . . 

“ Men not professing the Christian religion cannot be saved 
‘ in any other way whatsoever, be they never so diligent to 

* conform their lives according to the light of Nature. We 
4 cannot by our best works merit pardon of sin. There is no 
f sin so small but that it deserves damnation. Works done 
‘ by unregenerate men, although, for the matter of that, they 

* may be things which God commands, and of good use both 
‘ to themselves and others, are sinful and cannot please God, 

‘ or make a man meet to receive Christ or God. . . . 

“The souls of the wicked are cast into hell, where they 

* remain in torment and utter darkness, reserved to the judg- 
‘ ment of the great day. At the last day the righteous shall 
‘ come into everlasting life, but the wicked shall be cast into 
‘ eternal torment and punished with everlasting destruction. 

* The wicked shall be cast into hell,' to be punished with un- 

1 Athanasian Creed. 


THE GENTILE CHURCH. 


375 


* speakable torment, both of body and soul, with the devil 
‘ and his angels, for ever. . . . 

“At the day of judgment you, being caught up to Christ 
‘ in the clouds, shall be seated at His right hand and there 
‘ openly acknowledged and acquitted, and you shall join with 
‘ Him in the damnation of your son.” v 

Ho man is to be allowed to buy salvation except stamped 
thus, and no Church to sell it. Until quite recently, any man 
in Christendom who had not been baptised, or who denied 
that he was a Christian according to this faith, was an out¬ 
cast ; and a few hundred years ago would not have been 
allowed to exist. Jewish persecutions up to the present day 
testify to the cruelty of “ the beast.” 

Dr Edward Irving, one of the noblest men and greatest 
spiritual geniuses which this century has produced, was pene¬ 
trated with the conviction that Christendom was the beast, 
and gave vent to that conviction in the following words: 
“ The present visible church of the Gentiles, which hath been 
‘ the depository of the oracles and the sacraments and the 

* ordinances since the Jewish state was dissolved—I mean 
‘ the mixed multitude which are baptised in the name of the 
4 Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost under that seal, 
4 including Protestants, Roman Catholics, Greek Church, 
‘ Arminians, and all the sects of each, as Scottish, English, 
‘ Irish, Lutheran, and Calvinistic Churches, with the dis- 

* senters and seceders from each. This body of baptised men, 
‘ which I call the Gentile Church, who should every one of 
‘ them have been a saint, being by baptism ingrafted into 
‘ Jesus Christ, to be made partakers of His justice, whereby 
‘ our sins are covered and remitted, standeth threatened in 
‘ the Holy Scriptures because of its hypocrisies, idolatries, 
4 superstitions, infidelity, and enormous wickedness, because 
4 it hath transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, and 
‘ broken the everlasting covenant (Isa. xxiv.), with such a 
4 terrible judgment, as hath not been, nor ever shall again be 
4 seen upon the earth; in the which deluge of wrath she shall 
4 be clean dissolved, as the synagogue was heretofore in the 
4 destruction of Jerusalem, when she in like manner had 
4 filled up the measure of her iniquity; which fearful con- 
4 summation I judge to be close at hand, both by the signs of 


376 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


‘ the times, and from the prophetic numbers expressly given 
‘ to guide us in the anticipation of these great Gentile judg- 
‘ ments which are mentioned in Scripture wherever and 
‘ whenever the coming of the Lord is mentioned.” 

Those who dare to denounce the perverted theology and 
false dogmas which have led to such results, must be pre¬ 
pared to meet the storm which will be roused against them 
by what the same writer calls “ the British Inquisition, 
‘ whose ignorance of truth I know to be equalled only by 
‘ their malice against everything which touched the inf alii- 
‘ bility of their idol Public Opinion. I mean,” he continues, 
“ by the British Inquisition, that court whose ministers and 
‘ agents carry on their operations in secret; who drag every 

* man’s most private affairs before the sight of thousands, and 

* seek to mangle and destroy his life as an instructor, trying 
4 him without a witness, condemning him without a hearing, 

* nor suffering him to speak for himself; intermeddling in 

* things of which they have no knowledge, and cannot on any 
‘ principle have a jurisdiction; and defacing and deforming 
‘ the finest beauty and the profoundest wisdom by the rancour 
‘ of their malice. I mean those who set principle, who set 

* truth, who set justice, who set everything sacred up to sale: 

‘ I mean the ignorant, unprincipled, unhallowed spirit of 

* criticism, which in this Protestant country is producing as 

* foul effects against truth, and by as dishonest means, as ever 

* did the Inquisition of Rome.” 1 

“ Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count 
the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and 
his number is six hundred and sixty-six.” 

If we take the numerical value of the Hebrew letters, 
according to the usual methods of kabbalistic or mystical in¬ 
terpretation, we find this name to signify the offspring of the 
polluted Pneuma and the inverted Shaddai. 

It must be remembered that the denunciations, in the sub¬ 
sequent chapter of Revelation, of those who worship the 
image of the beast, and have received his mark, do not apply 
to the ignorant and superstitious masses, but to those who 
are responsible for the gross perversions and flagrant iniqui- 

1 Preliminary Discourse to Ben Ezra’s work on the Second Advent, by the 
Rev. Edward Irving, pp. 5 and 22. 


THE CROSS OF CHRIST. 


377 


ties which have characterised the religion, almost ever since 
it has been called by the name of Christ. 

The history of the Eoman and Greek Churches is a hideous 
record of blasphemy and crime, of the most wanton desecra¬ 
tion of the name and teaching of Christ, of the foulest hy¬ 
pocrisy, of unbridled lust, and of relentless cruelty. It is 
only held in check now by the requirements of modern civil¬ 
isation ; but the old spirit is still latent, and in the eastern 
parts of Europe and west of Asia, Christendom is inferior to 
most Eastern religions, and in fact scarcely removed from 
the paganism of the savage. At the same time, among its 
devotees, as among the devotees of all religions, whether lay 
or clerical, are to be found the “salt of the earth,” whose 
intuitive instinct it is to discover what is good in their 
religion, by whatever name it is called, and to practise it. 
Anti-Christendom abounds in true Christians. Many of these 
will feel a pang at the idea of giving up the beloved symbol, 
which has proved so often a solace to them in suffering, and 
an encouragement to them in effort; but one of the most 
powerful hindrances to the approach of Christ the Bride¬ 
groom, is this constant clinging to the cross of Christ the 
victim. 

It is a hindrance for two reasons. One is that the ma¬ 
jority of people cling to the contemplation of the sacrifice 
of' Christ, because they believe that by doing so they will 
escape eternal damnation. In the first place, there is no 
such thing as eternal damnation; and in the second, if there 
were, they could not fit themselves for it more aptly than by 
making use of a perfectly innocent victim, for purely selfish 
purposes, in order to appease the wrath of an angry God. The 
stagnant and utterly feeble condition of Christ’s Church on 
earth is well expressed by the line of the popular hymn— 

“ Simply to Thy cross I cling.” 

To hang on to it like a drowning wretch is considered the 
highest evidence of piety, and the noblest effort man can 
make for his afflicted fellow-men. Though it has not been 
without its value as a moral agent and an emblem of self- 
sacrifice, it has now become a mere drag to hold man back 
from the side of his Master, who is thus placed like a magnet 


378 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


in the remote past to attract Christians backward, or root 
them to the ground, and the lofty inspirations and high en¬ 
deavours for humanity of those who love Him thus become 
paralysed. 

But the standard of Christ is floating before us, and not 
behind us; and on its folds is emblazoned the Dove, the 
emblem of His Bride, the Sympneumatic Church—and not 
the Cross. 

The second reason why the cross of the victim operates as- 
a hindrance to the approach of the Bridegroom is, that it 
falsifies our entire conception of Christ as He is now, and 
His present work, and of our duties in regard to it. He is a 
conquering warrior, summoning us to the battle which is to 
precede His nuptials. We get near Him just in the degree 
in which we realise that this is the case, and, “ forgetting 
‘ those things that are behind, and reaching forth to those 
‘ things that are before, press towards the mark for the prize 
‘ of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” 

It is not on the wound that our General received on the 
first day of His first battle, that we are to fix our minds if we 
would co-operate with Him, but on the orders which we 
receive in the struggle in which we are now engaged under 
His leadership, and in a determination to do or to die, as He 
did; and by our deaths, if necessary, to help to win salvation 
for the race. 

The last chapters of the Revelation, to which we must now 
return, describe the overthrow of His enemies, and the descent 
of His Bride. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 


THE FOURTEENTH AND FOLLOWING CHAPTERS OF REVELATION INTER¬ 
PRETED—COLLISION ON EARTH BETWEEN THE SYMPNEUMATIC AND 
ANTI-SYMPNEUMATIC FORCES — CATASTROPHIC CHANGES IN CONSE¬ 
QUENCE—THE FATE OF THE SIDDIM—THE TRIUMPH OF THE SAINTS- 
— THE SECOND ADVENT, AND THE DESCENT OF THE BRIDE — RE¬ 
CAPITULATION. 

The first five verses of the fourteenth chapter have reference 
entirely to the joys of the saints in the invisible part of our 
universe, who “were redeemed from among men, being the 
first-fruits unto God and the Lamb.” “ The angel that flew 

* in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to* 

* preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every 

* nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying with a. 
‘ loud voice, Tear God, and give glory to Him ; for the hour 
‘ of His judgment is come,” signifies the proclamation of the- 
Sympneuma to man, and the advent thereof. 

The angel that follows, saying, “ Babylon is fallen, is. 
fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink 
of the wine of the wrath of her fornication,” signifies the 
proclamation of the overthrow of anti-Christendom, with its. 
existing ecclesiastical organisations. The expression “wine 
of the wrath of her fornication ” seems to have no sense, on 
account of its incorrect rendering. It is literally the “ wine 
of the essence of her fornication,” and has reference especially 
to the desecration of the sympneumatic elements contained 
in the blood of Christ, by the ecclesiastical dogma, which 
transmutes ordinary wine into His actual blood. 

“ The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God”' 
should in the same way mean “of the essence of God”; 


380 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


“ which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his 
indignation ” is also a misleading translation, “ indignation ” 
meaning more properly “ temperament,” and referring not to 
God, but to the temperament of the man who drinks of the 
essence of God. In other words, these verses signify a 
collision between the divine pneumatic force and the in¬ 
fernal ecclesiastical one; and the “ torment with fire and 
brimstone” signifies the acute suffering caused by this col¬ 
lision ; “ torment ” meaning literally “ testing by suffering,” 
which will overtake every one “ who worships the beast or 
4 his image, or receives his mark on his forehead or into his 

* hand,” and who refuses the gift of sympneumatic life now 
•offered to him. 

“ Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that 
keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus,” 
signifies the trials which those who have accepted this gift 
will be called upon to endure. 

“ And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, 

4 Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord henceforth, saith 
■* the Spirit, for they rest from their labours; and their works 

* do follow them,” signifies that those who have received this 
gift enter the invisible world under different conditions 

-o 

atomically from those who predeceased them, in ignorance 
•of sympneumatic contact. “ And their works do follow 
them,” signifies that their efforts here receive their full 
fruition by a perfect sympneumatic union hereafter. 

The remainder of the chapter contains an account of judg¬ 
ments to come ; but it must be remembered that none of 
these judgments are in the sense of punishment or vengeance, 
but are the inevitable results of the infractions of law. The 
Greek word Kpicns, which is usually translated judgment, 
would be more correctly rendered by a word which did not 
carry with it the idea of condemnation. 

The following chapter refers entirely to the upper region 
of the invisible portion of our universe. It must be borne 
in mind that the words “heaven” and “hell” in the Bible 
-always include the upper and lower portions of our world, 
and sometimes refer to them exclusively. 

The seven plagues of the sixth verse are various methods 
of operation of divine pneumatic force, which, antagonising 


THE SEVEN VIALS. 


381 


the corresponding methods of infernal pneumatic force, bring 
man to a crisis for violating law. 

The sixteenth chapter contains an account of the crises 
which have overtaken man, both in the visible and invisible 
portions of our universe, and of the violent disturbances thus 
produced; also of those which are yet to follow. 

The first, second, and third vials have reference to events 
which have already occurred, in consequence of this collision, 
on earth. 

The fourth vial refers to crises which have overtaken the 
race in the lower invisible region of our universe. 

The fifth vial refers to crises which are about to overtake 
anti-Christendom. 

The sixth vial refers to crises which are about to overtake 
Islam and the Eastern religions; the three “ unclean spirits,” 
which are “the spirits of devils working miracles,” are the 
polluted pneumatic forces working in man by three different 
modes of operation, and which are being projected by the 
Siddim, through the lower invisible region of our universe, 
into this world; “ which go forth to the kings of the earth, 
and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that 
great day of God Almighty (Shaddai),” signifies that these 
forces are about to precipitate the crisis, to meet which the 
pure sympneumatic forces are now being developed in man. 

“ Behold, I come as a thief,” signifies the secrecy with which 
these forces steal into the organism. “Blessed is he that 
watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and 
they see his shame,” signifies the necessity of protecting the 
sympneumatic force by vigilance, purity, and discretion. 

“ And he gathered them together into a place called in the 
Hebrew tongue Armageddon,” signifies that the battle-field 
will be, as the name implies, masculine strength and femi¬ 
nine fruitfulness. 

“ And the" seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; 
and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, 
from the throne, saying, It is done.” This signifies the second 
coming of Christ into the world, and the final accomplishment 
of His work in man. 

The next three verses describe the troubles which will ensue 
to humanity, not in anti-Christendom alone, from the terrific 


382 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


projection of pneumatic force consequent on Christ’s descent; 
these are likened to voices, thunderings, lightnings, and a great 
earthquake. 

“ And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every 

< stone about the weight of a talent: and men blasphemed God 
‘ because of the weight of the hail; for the plague thereof was 

< exceeding great,” signifies the descent, from the upper invis¬ 
ible portion of our universe, of a great company of saints, in 
sympneumatic relations with those here, and the impotence 
-of men animated by the infernal pneumatic forces to resist 
them. 

The seventeenth and eighteenth chapters describe the final 
•extinction and destruction of the Gentile Church, which ex¬ 
ists now, and is called by the name of Christ, with all its 
dogmatic ramifications, ecclesiastical organisations, and sects, 
tawdry ceremonials, and empty formulas. This inversion is 
figured as a “ woman, sitting upon a scarlet-coloured beast, full 

* of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns, 

* arrayed in scarlet and fine linen, decked with gold, and pre- 

* cious stones, and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand 
‘ full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication.” By 
a certain section' of Christians this is applied to the Church 
of Borne; but it applies to themselves as well, for the whole 
spirit of existing Christianity is one of rank blasphemy, inas¬ 
much as it is based on the anti-Christian principle of enlight¬ 
ened selfishness. The social and political systems, involving 
bloody wars and hideous immoralities, constructed upon this 
basis, they call by the most holy name of Christ; thus cruci¬ 
fying Him afresh, and putting Him to an open shame. 

There is no language which can fitly describe this gross 
profanation; but the seer has designated it by the name writ¬ 
ten upon the forehead of the woman, which is— 

“ MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS 
AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” 

“ Mystery ” here signifies darkness. I have in a previous 
chapter described the aspect of Christendom, as s.een from 
the invisible portion of our universe, under its black pall 
of atomic infusoria. “ Babylon the great ” signifies that the 


THE MILLENNIUM. 


383 


inversions are as pagan in their essence as those which char¬ 
acterised the inversions of the Babylonian religion, after it 
lost its primitive purity; and it is called “the great,” be¬ 
cause it includes all Christendom, and not any one section of 
it. “ The mother of harlots and abominations of the earth,” 
signifies that from its womb have sprung impurities and 
crimes of the blackest description. 

The rest of the chapter contains arcana with reference to 
these, which it is not necessary here to specify ; nor is it nec¬ 
essary to enter upon the details of the nature of the crises by 
which anti-Christendom or the Gentile Church will be over¬ 
taken, contained in the eighteenth chapter. 

It is a relief to turn from so painful a subject to the de¬ 
scription given in the nineteenth chapter of the final prepara¬ 
tions for the marriage supper of the Lamb, which signifies the 
union of Christ with His sympneumatic Church, and the con¬ 
quest of the Siddistic infestation of humanity. 

The twentieth chapter foretells a period of repose into which 
the world will enter owing to this victory, and the reign of 
Christ and the sympneumatic Church upon the earth for a 
long period, which is popularly known as the Millennium. 
During this time the earth will be open to the upper invisible 
region of our universe, to whom, as to their atomic structure, 
the inhabitants of the earth will be likened. This is signified 
in the words, “ Blessed is he that hath part in the first resur- 
4 rection: on such the second death hath no power, but they 

* shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with 

* Him a thousand years.” 

The earth during this time will not only be impervious to 
Siddistic attack, but to invasion from the inhabitants of the 
lower invisible region of our universe. This is signified in 
the words, “ But the rest of the dead lived not again till the 
thousand years were finished.” At the expiration of the 
period here mystically indicated, the earth will be exposed 
to a new Siddistic attack, which is signified in the words, 
“ And when the thousand years have expired, Satan shall be 
loosed out of prison.” 

The result of the struggle which will then ensue will be a 
victory over the Siddim, which will be accomplished by the 
descent of the Seraphim—a word meaning “fiery creatures”— 


384 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


to earth. This is signified in the words, “ And fire came down 
from God and out of heaven and devoured them.” 

Their subsequent fate is signified in the words, “ And the- 
‘ devil, that deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and 

* brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and. 

* shall be tested day and night for ages of ages.” The words,, 
“tormented for ever and ever,” contained in the English 
version of the Bible, are a strained translation of the original,, 
to accord with the idea of eternal punishment, which is a 
radically false one. The literal translation is the one given 
above, and signifies the long period of probationary discipline- 
through which the Siddim must pass before they can be 
finally redeemed. This is the necessary consequence of the 
lengthened duration of their wilful inversion of truth, and vio¬ 
lation of law; but the final and ultimate extinction of the 
world they inhabit, and the liberation of their wills from the 
prison-house of self in which they have been so long confined,, 
and their reabsorption into the will of the infinite All-Father 
and All-Mother, however long delayed, is certain. The ex¬ 
tinction of the invisible portion of our universe will also take 
place simultaneously with the conquest over the Siddim; 
some of those, who were too fixed in their vices to be restored, 
having their future lot cast with the latter in the region of 
testing or purification, signified in the words, “ lake of fire ”; 
and others being restored to our own world, as is signified in 
the words, “ And the dead were judged out of those things 
which were written in the books, according to their works.” 

The change which will thereby be effected is signified in the 
words, “ And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire.” 

The final union of Christ with His Church is described in 
the next chapter. By this time the animal, vegetable, and 
mineral worlds will have undergone atomic transformations 
of so vast a kind that they are indicated by the seer in the 
words, “ And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the 
first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there 
was no more sea.” This last sentence signifies that the ocean 
which now separates the visible from the invisible will no 
longer exist. The universe will again form one, visible to all 
its inhabitants, for the atomic accretion will have been re¬ 
moved, faculties which are now subsurface or supersensuous. 



THE SHECHINAH. 


.'85 

will be developed, the conditions of life and of translation to the 
new heaven, which is the unfallen region of the former world, 
will be altogether changed. And this change will no less 
affect the animal creation, which will also develop new fac¬ 
ulties and instincts, losing all those which are predatory or 
carnivorous, and fulfilling the prophet’s words that “ the lion 
shall lie down with the lamb.” 

Therefore, “He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I 
make all things new ”; and there was a “ great voice which 
cried out of heaven, saying, The tabernacle of God is with 
men.” 

These are the most pregnant words in the whole book; for 
they signify the presence of the Divine Feminine, because the 
tabernacle was the abode of the Shechinah. The elaborate 
instructions given to Moses during his retirement of forty days 
and nights on the top of Mount Sinai, in regard to the con¬ 
struction of the tabernacle, contained the mystery which the 
cloud concealed, out of which God called to Moses , 1 when 
“ the sight of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on 
the top of the mount, in the sight of the children of Israel,” 
and which was, in fact, the Shechinah or Divine Feminine. 
Therefore he said, “ There will I meet with the children of 
Israel, and the tabernacle will be sanctified with my glory; ” 2 
for the tabernacle was to contain the ark, over which this 
cloud of glory brooded, between the wings of the cherubim, 
and from which issued the divine instructions; and so we 
are told that when the tabernacle was finished, “a cloud 
‘ covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the 
* Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter 
4 into the tent of the congregation, because the cloud abode 
4 thereon, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.” 3 

Thus was typified that grander tabernacle which has yet to 
be erected in the hearts of those who have recovered the lost 
bisexual image: and this is the great consummation predicted 
by the seer, when he said that God “ shall dwell with them; 
and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with 
them, and be their God.” 

That this blessed consummation will be the result of the 
death of Christ, receives a remarkable confirmation in an event 
1 Exodus xxiv. 16, 17. 2 Exodus xxix. 43. 3 Exodus xl. 34. 

2 B 


386 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


which, we are told, occurred on that occasion. It will be 
remembered that the ark was hidden from the public by a 
veil, within which only the high priest was allowed to enter; 
the mystery of the Divine Feminine, which brooded between 
the cherubim, was thus shrouded. In the second temple, 
though the original ark was no longer there, the veil still 
concealed from view the Holy of Holies, which was the 
sanctuary of the hidden mystery. But at the moment of 
Christ’s death, we are told, the veil of the temple was rent 
in twain from the top to the bottom. In other words, that 
act made a breach in the outer covering, and a way was made 
into the Holy of Holies by which man might henceforth have 
access to the mystery it had concealed. The words “ Holy of 
Holies ” contain another still more esoteric sense which I am 
not permitted here to explain. 

The writer now gives a picture, in glowing and poetic lan¬ 
guage, of the happiness resulting from the constant presence 
of God with man, and follows it with a description of the 
descent of the Bride, the Lamb’s wife, typified under the 
symbol of a bridal city—the New Jerusalem—of which we 
are told that there was “ no temple therein: for the Lord God 
c Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And the city 

* had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: 
« for the glory of the Lord did lighten it, and the Lamb is the 

* light thereof. And the nations of them which are saved shall 
‘ walk in the light of it.” All these allusions to glory and 
light refer to the Divine Feminine principle, with which the 
world has then become endowed through the descent of the 
Bride. The blessed consequences of this descent are still further 
developed in the last chapter, where “ the pure river of water 

* of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God 
‘ and of the Lamb,” with “the tree of life, on either side of it, 

* whose leaves are for the healing of the nations,” need no 
interpretation. 

The story of the race has thus been narrated, in the form 
of the Word contained in the Bible, from its Alpha to its 
Omega. It has been shown how it was an emanation from 
a previous world; how what is called “ evil ” entered into that 
world through will-perversion ; how evolution could only pro- 


■RECAPITULATION. 


387 


gress under mixed conditions in consequence; how man was 
generated by respirative emanation; how he differed as to his 
atomic substance from the animal, vegetable, and mineral 
nature by which he was surrounded; how, by atomic affinity 
with the fallen race of the previous world, he was exposed to 
their attacks; how his atomic elements underwent changes in 
consequence, and the Divine Feminine receded from him, 
while the Divine Masculine took an unnatural and debased 
form; how his conception of the Deity suffered in conse¬ 
quence; how, under the influence of the infernal masculine 
und degraded feminine, he fell still further; how the bisexual 
principle became at last absolutely severed, until he lost con¬ 
sciousness that it had ever existed; how, in consequence of 
the changes he was undergoing, and the constant attacks to 
which he was subjected from the Siddim, great portions of 
the world and of the race upon it were submerged; how a 
remnant remained to preserve the truth; how it was neces¬ 
sary to veil the truth from the common herd, for fear of its 
profanation ; how it existed in some form or other in the most 
ancient sacred books of all religions; how it was finally con¬ 
fided to the guardianship of a special race ; how, nevertheless, 
a means existed for preparing man to receive it, and to com¬ 
prehend and invoke its potency; how that means was a 
human being, born under appropriate conditions, who should 
voluntarily allow himself to be put to death, because only thus 
could he distribute the elements of the Divine Feminine here, 
and so connect the visible part of our universe by an atomic 
sympneumatic chain with that which is invisible; how these 
two, being atomically interlocked, form only one universe, 
constantly acting and reacting upon one another; how, ever 
since the first coming of Christ, the sympneumatic processes 
have been developing both in the visible and invisible worlds; 
how that development has now reached a stage which has 
enabled this revelation to be made; how the agency of the 
forces which they contain, offer the only means of purification 
for the world from the infernal lust-principle, which has 
poisoned the springs of its life; how those springs will be 
purified by the efforts of that portion of humanity which is 
prepared to give itself up to the work; how, finally, it is only 
through the co-operation of those of our own race, who have 


388 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


passed into the upper invisible region of our universe, acting 
under the direction and control of Christ, that this great end 
can be achieved, which will have for its final result not merely 
the salvation of our own visible world—not merely that of 
the lower portion of it which is invisible—but, in the far- 
distant future, of that still lower world which is the fallen 
portion of the universe from which we sprang, which is the 
origin of what we call evil, but which is sustained, neverthe¬ 
less, by the divine vitality, and bears concealed in its darkest 
recesses the imprisoned elements of bisexual life, with their 
latent germs of perfect good and perfect purity. 

This is the glorious mission of humanity, “ and the pneuma 
and the bride say, Come.” 

I cannot close the message, with the delivery of which I 
felt myself charged, without expressing my sense of the im¬ 
perfections I labour under as a medium of transmission for 
the truths which I have endeavoured to convey in these 
pages. 

I have explained in the earlier chapters how entirely the 
form of such a work is dependent on the idiosyncrasies, the 
training, and the natural gifts of the person intrusted with 
its expression, and I am painfully aware of my own deficiency 
as an instrument for putting into suitable language the preg¬ 
nant ideas which have forced themselves upon my con¬ 
sciousness. 

Until I was six-and-thirty years of age my mind was 
wholly absorbed by the pleasures and ambitions of a 
thoroughly worldly life, and I carefully suppressed an under¬ 
current of thought which occasionally reminded me that I 
was not put into the world to gratify my own tastes. At that 
period, under a pressure that was at the time irresistible, 
I felt myself compelled, much against my natural inclina¬ 
tion, to abandon the life I had hitherto been leading, some 
account of which I have given in a book which I have 
recently published , 1 and to devote myself to the investi¬ 
gation of those more hidden laws of nature, which, I felt 

1 Episodes in a Life of Adventure; or, Moss a Rolling Stone. William 
Blackwood & Sons. 


CONCLUSION. 


389 


convinced, concealed divine truths that had as yet been 
hidden from man. There is no more finality in the know¬ 
ledge of sacred things than in any other kind of wisdom; 
but I looked in vain for religious progress in any quarter. 
The great moral impetus given to the world nearly nineteen 
hundred years ago soon expended itself, in so far as its 
practical bearing upon outward daily life was concerned; 
and since then, the gleams of truth shed upon the problems 
which vex humanity have been few and fitful. 

In the endeavour to throw such light as I have been vouch¬ 
safed upon them, a previous scientific or theological training 
would have enabled me to utilise knowledge which I do not 
now possess, in further illustration of the subject. This, how¬ 
ever, I will leave the men of science and theologians to do for 
themselves, while I avail myself of this opportunity to assure 
them, that if I have felt constrained to speak severely of the 
prejudice and intolerance which characterise both schools of 
thought, I have not done so from any sentiment of disrespect 
to the men themselves, feeling convinced that no better men 
could be found than among agnostic professors and Trini¬ 
tarian priests; no thanks, however, to the dogmas either of 
their science or their theology. 

I have availed myself of the kind services of a friend who 
once belonged to the latter category, but who is now able, 
from his own personal experience, to write from the sym- 
pneumatic standpoint, and to confirm by Biblical quotation 
and illustration the statements made in this book; but I am 
impressed to inform my readers that this is only the unfold¬ 
ing of the outer covering of the mystery. The real mystery, 
for which they are not yet prepared, lies within. 

This outer covering makes no claim to infallibility, but 
it does claim to be experimentally tested, and not merely 
intellectually judged; for the rational faculty of man is too 
strained and warped by exclusive development, to the sacrifice 
of his moral evolution, to be of any value in estimating results 
which have been arrived at by moral, and not by intellectual, 
effort. 

Above all, it is not for the purpose of adding to the number 
of religious sects which are now existing, that this message 


390 


SCIENTIFIC BELIGION. 


has been delivered, but rather for the purpose of preparing 
the minds of men — whatever be their religious or philo¬ 
sophic opinions — for one which is to follow it, and of 
urging them to enter upon a more severe and searching 
process of self-discipline than any Church can impose, for it 
does not hold out salvation as a reward, nor offer the aegis of 
a Church as a shelter and support. 

Popular theology and popular science will alike prove 
broken reeds to trust to in the days which are approaching. 


I 




APPENDIX I. 









































‘ 




























• . 
• . 


















































































APPENDIX I. 


I append here some extracts from the Book of the Lesser Holy 
Assembly (Mather’s * Kabbalah Unveiled,’ chapters viii. and xxii) 
They will probably be found too mystical for the ordinary reader; 
but they, together with many other passages in the Kabbalah bear¬ 
ing on the same subject, possess great value and importance, as 
showing the profound knowledge which existed from a very early 
period, among a mystical sect of Jews, of the nature of the Divine 
Feminine, or Pneuma; of the proceeding “Word,” or Son; and of 
the Bride, or Sympneuma—for the Bride of the Son is His Sym- 
pneuma, and the two conjoined are the type of all human Sym- 
pneumata, whereby we are united through Christ the Son and His 
Bride, to the Great Father and Mother, the Infinite Two-in-One. 

“(As to the sacred name, IHVH. 1 ) I, Yod, is included in this Chok- 
mah, Wisdom; H, He, is Aima, and is called Binah, Understanding; 
YH, Vau, He, are those two children who are produced from Aima, the 
Mother. 

“ Also we have learned that the name Binah comprehendeth all things. 
For in Her is I, Yod, which is associated with Aima, or the letter H, 
He, and together they produce BN, Ben , the Son ; and this is the word 
Binah, Father and Mother, who are I, Yod, and H, He —with whom are 
interwoven the letters B, Beth, and N, Nun, which are Ben; and thus 
ar regarding Binah, 

“ Also She is called Thebunah, the Special Intelligence. Wherefore 
is She sometimes Thebunah, and not Binah 1 

“ Assuredly Thebunah is She called at that time in which Her two 
children appear, the Son and the Daughter, Ben Va-Bath, who are Vau , 
He; and at that time She is called Thebunah. 

1 (Jehovah.) For the methods of interpretation of alphabetical symbolisms, the 
reader is referred to Mr Mather’s Introduction to the ‘ Kabbalah Unveiled.’ 



394 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


“ For all things are comprehended in those letters, Vau, He, which are 
Ben Va-Bath, Son and Daughter. . . . 

“ In the Book of Rav Hamenuna the Elder, it is said that Solomon 
revealeth the primal conformation (that is, the Mother), when he saith. 
Cant. i. 15, ‘Behold, thou art fair, my love;’ 1 wherefore he followeth 
it out himself. 

“ And he calleth the second conformation the Bride, which is called 
the Inferior Woman. 

“ And there are some who apply both these names (those namely of 
Love and Bride) to this Inferior Woman, but these are not so. 

“ For the first H, He (of IHYH), is not called the Bride ; but the last 
H, He , is called the Bride at certain times, on account of many symbolic 
reasons. 

“ For many are the times when the Male is not associated with Her, 
but is separated from Her. 

“Concerning this period, it is said (Lev. xviii. 19), ‘Also thou shalt 
not approach unto a woman in the separation of her uncleanness.’ 

“ But when the female hath been purified, and the male desireth to 
be united unto her, then is she called the Bride—the Bride properly so 
called. 2 

“ But as to that which pertaineth to the Mother, then the benevolence 
of them both is not taken away to all eternity. 

“Together they (Chokmah and Binah, IH) go forth, together they 
are at rest; the one ceaseth not from the other, and the one is never 
taken away from the other. 

And therefore it is written (Gen. ii. 10), ‘And a river went forth out 
of Eden.’ Properly speaking, it goeth forth, and never faileth. 

“ As it is written (Isa. lviii. 11), ‘ And like a fountain of waters, whose 
waters fail not.’ 

“ And therefore is She called ‘ My Love,’ since from the grace of kin¬ 
dred association they rest in perfect unity. 

“ But the other is called the Bride—for when the Male cometh, that 
He may consort with Her, then is She the Bride ; for She, properly 
speaking, cometh forth as the Bride. 

“ And therefore doth Solomon expound these two forms of the Wo¬ 
man ; and concerning the first form, indeed, he worketh hiddenly, seeing 
it is hidden. 

“But the second form is more fully explained, seeing it is not s 
hidden as the other. 

“ But at the end all his praise pertaineth unto Her who is supernal, 
as it is written, Cant. vi. 9 : ‘ She is the only one of Her mother; She 
is the choice one of Her that bare Her.’ 

“ And since this mother, Aima, is crowned with the crown of the 
Bride, and the grace of the letter I, Yod , ceaseth not from Her for ever, 

1 This affords an illustration of the esoteric meaning attached to certain portions 
of sacred literature by the Jewish mystics. 

2 This separation symbolises the alienation of humanity, or the earthly bride— 
also called the Church—because of its uncleanness, from the Divine Spouse. 


APPENDIX I. 


395 


hence unto Her arbitration is committed all the liberty of those in¬ 
ferior, and all the liberty of all things, and all the liberty of sinners, so- 
that all things may be purified. 

“ As it is written, Lev. xvi. 30, ‘ Since in that day he shall atone for 
you ’; 1 also it is written, Lev. xxv. 10, ‘ And ye shall hallow the fiftieth 
year. This year is YobeV 

“What is Yobelf as it is written, Jer. xvii. 8, ‘ Va-el-Yobel, and 
spreadeth out her roots by the river.’ Therefore that river, which ever 
goeth forth, and floweth, and goeth forth, and failet-h not. 2 

u It is written, Prov. ii. 3, * If thou wilt call Binah the Mother, and 
will give thy voice unto Thebunah.’ 3 

“Seeing it is said, ‘If thou wilt call Binah Mother, whv is Thebunah 
added 1’ 

“ Assuredly, according as I have said, all things are supernal truth ; 
Binah is higher than Thebunah. For in the word Binah are shown. 
Father, Mother, and Son ; since by the letters IH, Father and Mother- 
are denoted, and the letters BN, denoting the Son, are amalgamated 
with them. 

“ Thebunah is the whole completion of the children, since it con¬ 
tained the letters BN Ben, BTH Bath , and VH Vau He; by which are- 
denoted the Son and Daughter. 

“ Yet AB YAM, Ab Ve-Am, the Father and Mother, are not found,, 
save BAIMA, Be-Aima, in the Mother, for the venerable Aima broodeth 
over them, neither is she uncovered; 

“ Whence it cometh that that which embraced the two children ia 
called Thebunah, and that which embraced the Father, the Mother,, 
and the Son, is called Binah. 

“And when all things are comprehended, they are comprehended 
therein, and are called by that name of Father, Mother, and Son. 

“And these are Chokmah, Wisdom, Father; Binah, Understanding, 
Mother ; and Daath, Knowledge (the Son). 

“ Since that Son assumed the symbols of His Father and Mother 

1 The arcanum contained in this passage is, in fact, the mystery of Christ’s 
mission to earth. While the conjugal union of the Son and the Bride is subject to- 
interruption in consequence of the pollution by which humanity has become- 
tainted, the grace of Yod, the Infinite Father, ceaseth not from Aima, the Infinite- 
Mother—in other words, their conjugal union remains ever complete. And it is 
through the Infinite Mother, “to whose arbitration has been committed the- 
liberty of all things, that all things may be purified,” that means have been pro¬ 
vided for the redemption and purification of humanity through the operation of 
the Son, “since in that day he shall atone” for us—this atonement consisting in 
the incarnation in Christ of those elements of the Divine Feminine through the- 
supernal Son and Daughter, or Bride, which could only be distributed throughout 
nature by His death ; and thus, through the combined operation of the Pneuma 
and Sympneuma, indissolubly uniting us to the Infinite Father and Mother, Two- 
in-One. 

2 This river that “floweth, and goeth forth, and faileth not,” is the infinite love- 
of Aima, or, when She signifies Understanding, Binah. 

3 According to the English version, “ Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and 
liftest up thy voice for understanding.” 


396 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


and is called Daath, Knowledge, since lie is the testimony of them 
Loth. 1 

“ And that Son is called the first-born, as it is written, Exod. iv. 22, 
* Israel is my first-born Son.’ 

“And since He is called first-born, therefore it implieth dual off¬ 
spring.” 2 

Although there are many other allusions to this subject, which 
-are deeply interesting, I will only quote part of one other chapter, 
in the arcana of which may be discovered, by those who carefully 
study it, the extreme sanctity with which sex-conjunction was in¬ 
vested from the earliest times, as symbolised in the construction 
of the Jewish Temple. It also found expression in the earliest 
Teligions, in Phallic worship, and in those rites and mysteries 
which were soon so profaned, that the infinitely pure and sacred 
source to which they owed their origin became choked with pol¬ 
lution, and finally ceased to flow; for the earth was unfit to re¬ 
ceive the touch of the Divine Feminine. To protect it from still 
further prostitution, all consciousness thereof was withdrawn from 
the minds of men, until nature should receive a fresh discharge of 
purifying elements through a human organism specially prepared 
for the purpose. The time has once more arrived when those who 
are inspired with that courage which a passionate love for hu¬ 
manity can alone impart, may once more approach, with uncovered 
feet, that holy ground; for it is only in the mystic temple reared 
by the operation of the Divine Masculine and Feminine principles 
in the human breast, that the new worship can be inaugurated, 
and those potencies invoked, which shall redeem and purify the 
race. It is thus alone that, after her separation because of her 
uncleanliness, the Bride can be fitted for the arms of the Bride¬ 
groom, whose return is predicted in Holy Writ, and for whom 
those who love Him are eagerly watching. 


Chapter xxii. of the Book of the Lesser Holy Assembly, “ Concerning 
the remaining members of the Son, or the Lesser Countenance” :— 

“734. The Male is extended in right and left, through the inheritance 
which he receiveth (i.e., from Chokmah and Binah). 

“ 735. But whensoever the colours are mingled together then is He 
•called Tiphereth, and the whole body is formed into a tree (the Autz 
Ha-Chaiim, or Tree of Life), great and strong, and fair and beautiful. 
Dan. iv. II. 3 

1 Hence He is “ The Word.” 

2 The dual offspring is humanity, when it has become bisexual through sympneu- 
matic union ; and Israel, in this connection, typifies Christ. 

3 The Tree of Life is the bisexual body. 


APPENDIX I. 


397 


“736. ‘The beasts of the field had shadow under it, and the fowls 
of the heaven dwelt in the boughs thereof, and all flesh was fed on it.’ 

“737. His arms were right and left. In the right is Chesed and 
Life ; in the left is Geburah and Death. 

“738. Through Daath (Knowledge) are his inner parts formed, and 
they fill the Assemblies and Conclaves as we have said. 

“ 739. For thus is it written, ‘ And through Daath shall the Conclaves- 
be filled.’ 

“ 740. Afterwards is His body extended into two thighs, et intra hseo 
continentur duo renes, duo testiculi masculini. 

“741. Omne enim oleum, et dignitas, et vis masculi e toto corpore in 
istis congregatur ; nam omnes exercitus, qui prodeunt ab iis, omnes- 
prodeunt et morantur in orificio membri genitalis. 

“ 742. And therefore are they called Tzabaoth, the Armies ; and they 
are Netzach ( Victory ), and Hod (Glory). For Tiphereth is Tetragram- 
maton, 1 but Netzach and Hod are the armies ; hence cometh that name 
Tetragrammaton Tzabaoth. 2 

“743. Membrum masculi est extremitas totius corporis, et vocatur- 
Yesod, fundamentum, et hie est gradus ille qui mitigat feeminam. For 
every desire of the Male is towards the Female. 

“ 744. Per hoc fundamentum ille ingreditur in feeminam ; in locum 
qui vocatur Tzion et Jerusalem. Nam hie est locus tegendus feeminae, 
et in usore vocatur uterus. 

“ 745. And hence is Tetragrammaton Tzabaoth called Yesod, 3 the 
Foundation. Also it is written, Ps. cxxxii. 13—‘ Since Tetragrammaton 
hath chosen Tzion to be a habitation for Himself; He hath desired Her.’ 

“746. When Matronitha, the mother, is separated and conjoined with 
the King face to face in the excellence of the Sabbath, all things be¬ 
come one body. 

“ 747. And when the Holy One—blessed be He !—sitteth on His> 
throne, and all things are called the Complete Name, the Holy Name. 
Blessed be His Name for ever, and unto the ages of the ages ! 

“748. All these words have I kept back unto this day, which is. 
crowned by them for the world to come. And now herein are they 
manifested. O blessed be my portion ! 

“ 749. When this Mother is conjoined with the King, all the worlds, 
receive blessing, and the universe is found to be in joy. 

“ 750. Like as the Male (the Son) existeth from the Triad Kether (the 
Crown), Ghokmah (Wisdom), and Binah (Understanding), and His begin¬ 
ning is with the Triad, in this same manner are all things disposed, and. 
the end of the whole body is thus; also the Mother (Inferior) receiveth 
not the blessing except in the Syntagma of the Triad, and these paths, 
are Netzach, Hod, and Yesed. 

1 Tetragrammaton is Jehovah—that word being too holy to be pronounced. 

2 The Lord of Hosts. 

3 Yesod is the Lord ; Tzabaoth, composed of Hod and Netzach, are The Hosts 
hence we obtain the full internal significance of the expression, “The Lord o£ 
Hosts. ” 


398 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


“751. And She is mitigated, and receiveth blessing in that place 
which is called the Holy of Holies below. 

“752. As it is written, Ps. cxxxii. 13—‘Since there Tetragrammaton 
giveth His blessing.’ For there are two paths ; that which is above, md 
that which is below. 

“ 753. Hence there is permission granted unto none to enter therein, 
save unto the High Priest, who entereth from the side of Chesed, in 
order th^t none other might enter into that supernal place save that 
which is called Chesed. 

“754. And He entereth into the Holy of Holies, and the Bride is 
mitigated, and the Holy of Holies receiveth blessing in the place which 
is called Tzion. 

“ 755. But Tzion and Jerusalem are two paths, one denoting Mercy 
•and the other Justice. 

“ 756. For concerning Tzion it is written, Isa. i. 27 — ‘ Through 
Meshephat, Judgment, it is redeemed.’ And concerning Jerusalem, it is 
written, ibid., 21—‘Justice, Tzedek, abideth in Her,’ as we have before 
explained. 

“ 757. And every desire of the Male is toward the Female. But thus 
are these called, because hence proceed blessings for all the worlds, and 
all things receive blessing. 

“ 758. This place is called Holy, and all the holinesses of the Male enter 
therein through that path of which we have spoken. 

“ 759. But they all come from the supernal head of the Male skull, 
from that portion of the supernal brain wherein they reside. 

“760. And this blessing floweth down through all the members of 
the body, even unto those which are called Tzabaoth, the Armies. 

“761. And all that which floweth down throughout the whole body 
is congregated therein, and therefore are they called Tzabaoth, the 
Armies ; because all the armies of the superiors and inferiors go forth 
therefrom. 

“ 762. And that which floweth down into that place where it is con¬ 
gregated and which is emitted through that most holy Yesod, Founda¬ 
tion, is entirely white, and, therefore, is called Chesed. 

“ 763. Thence Chesed entereth into the Holy of Holies ; as it is 
written, Ps. cxxxiii. 3—‘For there Tetragrammaton commanded the 
blessing, even life for evermore.’” 

These were the last words which Rabbi Simeon Ben Yochai, 
whom Kabbalists believe to have been the writer of a great portion 
of the Kabbalah, ever spoke. The scribe to whom he was dictat¬ 
ing, Rabbi Abba, said, “ Scarcely could the Holy Light-bearer 
(Rabbi Simeon) finish the word ‘ Life ’ before his words ceased 
altogether. But I was writing them down, and thought there 
would still he more for me to write, but I heard nothing.” The 
scribe then proceeds to describe the phenomena which attended 
his death—“And a voice was heard (saying), Come ye, and as¬ 
semble together, and enter into the nuptials of Rabbi Simeon. 


APPENDIX I. 


399 


Isa. lvii., * Let him enter in with peace, and let them rest in their 
chambers/ ” From this it is clear that even in that early day 
holy men, who were versed in the mysteries, looked forward to 
that sympneumatic union after death by which they should be 
completed as to their personalities. And Rabbi Simeon brings 
this out still more clearly on a previous occasion when he says :— 

“And those words have hereunto been concealed, therefore have I 
feared to reveal the same, but now they are revealed. 

“ And I reveal them in the presence of the most Holy Ancient King ; 
for not for mine own glory, nor for the glory of my father’s house, do I 
this ; but I do this that I may not enter ashamed into His palaces. 

“ Henceforth I only see that He, God the Most Holy—may He be 
blessed !—and all those truly just men who are here found can all consent 
{hereunto) with me. 

“For I see that all can rejoice in these my nuptials, and that they 
all can be admitted into my nuptials in that world. Blessed be my 
portion! ” 










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APPENDIX II. 


BY 


A CLERGYMAN OE THE CHURCH OE ENGLAND 


CONTENTS OF APPENDIX II 


PAGE 


Preface, ........ 403 

On Angelic Ministry, or Spiritual Agency, . . 405 

On Inspiration, ....... 407 

On the Nature of God, . . . . ,411 

On the Miracles of Christ, . . . . .414 

On True Theology, . . . . , .418 

On the Purification of the Human Organism, . . 421 

On the term “Forgiveness of Sins,” . . . 425 

On the Dogma of the Atonement, .... 428 

On Implicit Obedience to the Dictates of Conscience, . 431 

On Love, ........ 433 

On the word “Power,” as used in the English New 

Testament, . . . . . . .437 

On the Physical Relation of Present Pain to Future 

Joy, ........ 439 

Of the Future Life, ...... 442 

On the Hidden Meaning of Scripture, . . 444 

On Spiritual Experiences, ..... 4*45 

On the word “Shaddai,” ..... 447 

On the Atomic Affinity between Christ and True Chris¬ 


tians, ....... 453 

On the Dogma of the Trinity, . 457 

On the word “Pneuma,” ..... 463 

On the Restoration of True Christianity, . . 470 

Postscript, ....... 472 




APPENDIX II. 


PREFACE TO THE NOTES IN THE APPENDIX 

The following notes are the result of a simple and honest search 
after the truth of God. 

The writer, in the course of a somewhat long and varied ex¬ 
perience as a priest of the Church of England, had for some time 
been, conscious of a growing uneasiness in his mind as to the 
present condition of Christianity. He had met, in the course of 
his ministry, with many evidences of a widespread sense of dis¬ 
satisfaction at the results hitherto achieved by the dogmas and 
organisations of the Churches and sects of Christendom. 

Nor, so far as his powers of investigation went, did he find 
it otherwise as regards the effects produced by the other great 
religions of the world. As to the practical daily life of the 
human race, the world at this moment is scarcely better than if 
all its religions had never existed. Evil passions of every kind 
were never more rampant than they are at present: misery, pain, 
sickness, and death, devastate humanity with their terrible scourges, 
as powerfully now as in any age of man’s fallen history. In a word, 
the regeneration of the human race, from sin and its consequences, 
seems to be as far as ever from its accomplishment. 

To any one who truly loves God and his fellow-creatures, this 
condition of things must appear inexpressibly sad; and to none 
more so than to honest and candid priests and ministers of 
religion,' who should be the first to welcome any uprejudiced 
and intelligent attempt to investigate the causes of past failure, 



404 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


and to discover the secret of future success. In order that such 
an attempt should be made under fitting conditions, it was 
necessary to divest one’s self, for the time, of all preconceived 
notions,—to remove one’s self entirely from the sphere of past 
duties and associations, and, in the childlike spirit of open recep¬ 
tivity and humble trust, to give one’s self up to the guidance of the 
Spirit of God. 

Such has been the simple aim of the writer, who lays no claim 
whatever to any infallible inspiration, who is conscious of the 
imperfection of his work, and who neither desires nor expects any 
of his readers to accept his dictum on any of the subjects treated 
of, without due investigation and conviction of its truth. All he 
asks is that his readers will approach the task in the same candid 
spirit as that which he has endeavoured to maintain for himself; 
and that they will give him credit for no other motive than that 
of seeking to discover the truth of God. 

He would suggest that these notes can only be profitably 
studied by those who will be content to take their Bibles and 
undergo the labour of examining the various passages referred 
to one by one; for a mere cursory reading of this appendix will 
do no good whatever. 

One other word of personal explanation may, perhaps, be per¬ 
mitted. The writer has at present withheld his name; not be¬ 
cause he is ashamed ef his efforts in the cause of truth, nor be¬ 
cause he is afraid of any results to himself that might attend the 
publication of it; but for entirely independent reasons, which the 
reader will doubtless accept as satisfactory when he learns that 
they meet with the approval of so fearless and straightforward a 
writer as Mr Oliphant. If at any future time he feels that the 
cause will be aided by the divulgence of his name, he will no longer 
keep it concealed. 

Meanwhile, to remove all occasion for cavil, he wishes to state 
that he is at present deriving no personal pecuniary benefit from 
any ecclesiastical organisation, nor is it his purpose ever to do so 
again in the future. 


M.A. Cantab. 


APPENDIX II. 


405 


NOTE A. 

ON ANGELIC MINISTRY, OR SPIRITUAL AGENCY. 

Chapter i. page 21. 

“ The unseen world teems with intelligences , whose action upon 
this one is very direct” 

One would imagine that this proposition was self-evident to 
any student of, and believer in, the Bible; and we should scarcely 
think it worth while to support ,it by passages from Holy Writ, 
were it not that the majority of professing Christians deny alto¬ 
gether, in the present day, the action of unseen intelligences and 
sensible manifestations of their power; though these manifesta¬ 
tions are constantly occurring in Bible history, and have, more¬ 
over, of late, forced themselves upon public notice by phenomena 
so remarkable that societies have been formed to investigate them. 

The Book of Genesis contains at least twenty-two distinct in¬ 
timations of this truth (xv. 10-17 ; xvi. 7-13; xvii. 1-22; xviii.; 
xix. 1-22; xx. 3-7; xxi. 17-19; xxii. 1-18; xxiv. 7; xxvi. 24; 
xxviii. 12-17; xxxi. 11; xxxi. 24; xxxii. 1, 2; xxxii. 24-32; 
xxxv. 1 ; xxxv. 9; xxxvii. 5-11 ; xl. 5-19; xli. 1-36 ; xlvi. 2-5; 
xlviii. 16). 

In the Book of Exodus we find six passages which can only be 
explained by the action of unseen intelligences on the wills or 
persons of the human beings affected (vii. 13; ix. 12; x. 20; 
xi. 10; xii. 27-29; xxiii. 20-23) 

In Leviticus there are three statements as to those who have 
“ familiar spirits ” (xix. 31; xx. 6 ; xx. 27). 

The Book of Numbers records explicitly the direct interference 
of an angel with Baalam (xxii. 22, &c.) 

Deuteronomy speaks again of familiar spirits (xviii. 11). 

In Joshua we find the “captain of the Lord’s host” appearing 
to the leader of the Israelites (v. 13-15). 

Judges records the appearances of angels to Gideon and Manoah 
(vi. 11-21; xiii. 3-22). 

The 1st Book of Samuel has several notable instances of the 
action of spiritual intelligences on man (iii. 4-18; xvi. 14-23; 
xix. 9; xxviii. 3, 7, 13). 

In the 2d Book of Samuel it is directly stated that it was an 
angel, a personal, intelligent, unseen being, that wrought the 
pestilence in the land of Israel during the reign of David (xxiv. 
16, &c.) 

Elijah and Micaiah, in the 1st Book of Kings, remind us of 


406 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


the active interference of the unseen world in the affairs of this 
earth (xix.; xxii.) 

Remarkable instances of the same truth are found in the 2d 
Book of Kings, especially in the case of Elisha at Dothan, and 
Sennacherib before Jerusalem (i. 10, 12; ii. 11; vi. 16, 17; xix. 
35 ; xxi. 6; xxiii. 24). 

Both the Books of Chronicles contain similar intimations (1st 
Chron. x. 13 ; 2d Chron. xxxiii. 6). 

Two distinct accounts of the same action are recorded in the 
Book of Job (i. 6-12; ii. 1-7 ; iv. 12-17). 

The Psalms are full of sentiments expressing a belief in this 
truth (viii. 5; xxxiv. 7; xxxv. 5, 6 ; lxviii. 17; lxxviii. 49; xci. 
11, 12; civ. 4, &c.) 

Ecclesiastes alludes to the same idea (v. 6). 

Isaiah dwells frequently and forcibly upon it (vi. 1-9; viii. 19 ; 
xi. 2; xix. 3; xxix. 4; xlvii. 9, &c.) 

Daniel bears out the same truth (iii. 25 ; v. 5, 6, 24-28 ; vi. 22). 

Zechariah records a notable account of the action of an angel 
and Satan with regard to the high priest (i. 9, &c.; iii.) 

We have thus deduced at least seventy-two separate instances— 
amongst others, from the Old Testament—testifying beyond con¬ 
tradiction to the active influence and interference exerted by the 
intelligences of the unseen world upon humanity. 

The New Testament simply teems with passages absolutely irre¬ 
concilable with any theory which excludes the doctrine of invisible 
intelligences. 

The following passages may be studied with interest in proof of 
this:— 

Matt. i. 20, 24; ii. 12, 13, 19; iii. 17 ; iv. 1-11 ; viii. 8-13; 
16, 28-34; ix. 32-34; x. 1, 8; xii. 22-28, 43-45; xv. 21-28; 
xvii. 18; xviii. 10; xxvi. 53; xxvii. 19; xxviii. 2-7. 

Marki. 13, 23-27, 32-34, 39; iii. 15, 22-30; v. 1-20; vi. 7, 
13; vii. 24-30; ix. 17-29; 38; xvi. 5, 9, 17. 

Luke i. 11-20, 26-38 ; ii. 9-14; iv. 1-13, 33-37, 41 ; vi. 18;. 
viii. 27-38; ix. 1, 38-42, 49, 50; xi. 14-26; xxii. 31, 43; 
xxiv. 4. 

John v. 4 ; xx. 12. 

Acts v. 16, 19, 20; viii. 7 ; ix. 3-8; x. 3-7 ; xii. 7-11; xvi. 
18; xix. 12-16; xxvii. 23. 

1 Cor. iv. 9; vi. 3; xi. 10; xii. 10. 

Gal. iii. 19. 

Heb. i. 14; ii. 2; xii. 22; xiii. 2. 

1 Pet. i. 12. 

1 John iv. 1. 

The Book of Revelation is so full of the subject that it is im¬ 
possible to note down all the passages. 


APPENDIX II. 


407 


But enough has been quoted to show that the Bible at any rate 
teaches unequivocally the intimate connection between the visible 
and invisible portions of the universe of God, and their mutual 
interaction the one upon the other. 


NOTE B. 

ON INSPIRATION. 

Chapter i. page 25. 

* “ Certainly others should shrink from asserting , as many do 
assert, not merely that these prophets and apostles speak with the 
divine voice, hut that it has been personally revealed to them that 
they did so ; for it must always come to this, either in the first or 
second degree, and that every word written was suggested literally 
by God” 

It is evident that St Paul himself was conscious of different 
degrees of “ inspiration ” at different times; and that, therefore, 
he himself did not consider his epistles, nor expect them to be 
considered, as universally divinely inspired, in the sense that every 
statement contained therein was to be accepted as coming directly 
and infallibly from God Himself. 

Every one of his epistles commences with the distinct announce¬ 
ment that it is he, Paul, that is about to write; and not once 
does he state, or even hint, in the preliminary announcements, that 
what is about to he written must be taken as coming from God, or 
held in any other light than an ordinary letter from an earnest 
and experienced missionary to a friend or body of friends, living 
in some locality where he has already ministered. 

Now and then, indeed, he seems to feel more powerfully than 
usual a divine influx or afflatus; and on such occasions he makes 
use of expressions intimating that this is the case. 

Sometimes, on the other hand, he is conscious of writing with 
little or no influx; and on such occasions he speaks diffidently, 
and seems to indicate that he desires his remarks to he taken for 
what they are worth. On the whole, his letters are manifestly 
those of a deeply earnest, truth - seeking, religious man, who 
thoroughly believes in all that he says, and who expects that his 
communications will be received by his correspondents with the 
respect and attention due to one who has been the human instru¬ 
ment of their conversion to the faith, and who is held in esteem and 
confidence by them for his learning, piety, and nearness to God. 

We might go further, and say that, undoubtedly, St Paul wrote 


408 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


under considerable internal influx; but he himself would have 
been the first to repudiate any claim to infallible inspiration. 

This will be apparent if we take his epistles separately, and, 
freeing them from the false glamour of superstition with which 
the Church has invested them, read them as we would any other 
letters written, under similar circumstances, by a missionary to 
his flock. Thus studied, they will be found to reveal themselves 
in a light far more beautiful, because more real and genuine, than 
they have ever appeared before; and in proportion as the false 
superhuman fades from our view, the lovely charm of the true 
humanity contained in those marvellous compositions, tempered 
by the varying shades of internal influx, will be the more clearly 
realised and appreciated by us. 

Nor need any one fear lest this realisation should diminish the 
value and authority of those writings; for a true conception must 
carry with it more power of conviction than that which is false. 

By way of illustration as to the foregoing remarks, let us take 
his letter to his Christian friends at Rome, commonly called “ The 
Epistle to the Romans.” 

After the introductory personal greeting and ministerial bless¬ 
ing, the writer tells his friends how deep is the interest which he 
takes in their welfare, how pleased he is to hear that they continue 
firm in their faith, how earnestly he prays for them, and how 
anxiously he longs to pay them another visit, as soon as the way 
is made clear for him to do so.—See Rom. i. 8-13. 

All this is evidently purely “ human,” and as such Paul himself 
regards it. He “ thanks God ” ; he “ calls God to witness ” of the 
truth of what he says as to his feelings; he places himself on a 
level with those to whom he writes, speaking of “the mutual 
faith both of you and me.” Passing on from mere personal 
matters, he discusses certain points of doctrine and conduct con¬ 
nected with the new religion; and the tone which he employs is 
just such as we should expect from one writing a letter of serious 
importance to new converts, who were still in doubt upon many 
matters of faith and practice. And though he clearly feels very 
deeply upon the subjects himself, and endeavours to impress his 
views most earnestly upon his readers, there is no sign throughout 
that he is conscious of any further inspiration than that accorded 
to one whose single aim is the truth, and who, by piety and 
self-sacrifice, has become more than ordinarily open to spiritual 
impressions, and thus more than ordinarily enabled to distinguish 
between a true and false afflatus. 

So much, indeed, does his own personality mingle itself with 
his writings, that, in the very midst of his arguments on certain 
points of doctrine, he pauses to take his friends into his confidence 
as to the spiritual conflict through which he himself has passed. 


APPENDIX II. 


409 


See chap. vii. 9-25. At other times, again, he uses such expres¬ 
sions as the following: “I am persuaded,” &c. (viii. 38, 39); “I 
say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me 
witness” (ix. 1); “My heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel 
is, that they might be saved” (x. 1); “We that are strong ought 
to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves ” 
(xv. 1); “I myself am persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye are 
full of goodness ” (xv. 14);—all tending to show how manifestly 
it was Paul’s feelings, Paul’s belief, Paul’s sympathies, Paul’s per¬ 
sonality, that were expressing themselves in this epistle. 

The very strongest forms of speech that he makes use of are 
these: “ I say, through the grace given unto me” (xii. 3); “I 
know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus” (xiv. 14); “I have 
written the more boldly unto you in some sort, because of the 
grace that is given to me of God” (xv. 15); but even in these he 
claims no infallible inspiration for himself, and in the last passage 
he explains what he means by “the grace given” unto him— 
namely, that he “should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the 
„ Gentiles.” 

He concludes his letter by repeating his desire to pay them a 
personal visit; and remarks that, as he hopes before long to make 
a trip to Spain, it is very possible that he may be able to take 
Pome en route. He explains his inability to visit them at the 
present time, owing to his being obliged to take some money to 
Jerusalem, which had been subscribed for the relief of the poor 
Christians in that city by the inhabitants of Macedonia and 
Greece; but he assures them that when he has accomplished that 
task, he will start as soon as possible for Spain. 

A long series of kind regards and messages of friendship and 
affection to several persons, whom he mentions by name, winds up 
the letter; and it is absurd to suppose that when Paul penned 
these private greetings, he could have imagined it likely, or even 
possible, that his. letter could have been considered by future 
generations as the infallible dictum of the Almighty, or, as it is 
styled, “the Word of God.” 

We have selected the Epistle to the Romans, simply because it 
is placed the first in order of St Paul’s Epistles in the Bible; but 
a careful and candid study of all or any of the others will give 
wery similar results. 

The following passages we have noted, as those in which St 
Paul most strongly suggests his consciousness of writing under an 
internal guidance. 

1. “How we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the 
spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are 
freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in 
words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by a holy 


410 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


influx; putting influxes together, and comparing them one with 
another” (1 Cor. ii. 12, 13). See Note S, p. 463, on the 
“ Pneuma.” 

2. “We have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. ii. 16). 

3. “I command, yet not I, but the Lord” (1 Cor. vii. 10). 

4. “ I have received of the Lord, that which also I delivered 
unto you” (1 Cor. xi. 23). 

5. “ The things that I write unto you are the commandments of 
the Lord” (1 Cor. xiv. 37). 

6. “ I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received n 
(1 Cor. xv. 3). 

7. “I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached 
of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither 
was I taught it, but through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 

i. 11, 12). 

8. “ If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God 
which is given me to you-ward, how that by revelation He made- 
known unto me the mystery . . . which in other ages was not 
made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto His^ 
holy apostles and prophets in spirit” (Eph. iii. 3, 5). 

9. “This we say unto you by the word of the Lord ” (1 Thess.. 
iv. 15). 

On these passages, we have to remark that 1, 2, 7, and 8 clearly 
refer to his whole ministry, and assert no infallible inspiration for 
his writings, and that 3, 4, 5, 6, and 9 allude to Christ’s own 
sayings, as recorded in the gospels, and related by those who heard 
them. (See Matt. v. 32 ; xix. 6, 9 ; Mark x. 11, 12; Luke xvi. 
18; Matt. xxvi. 26 ; Mark xiv. 22 ; Luke xxii. 19 ; Matt. xvi. 28;. 
Mark ix. 1; Luke ix. 27, &c.) 

On the other hand, in the following passages, St Paul is evidently 
conscious of writing on his own responsibility, and without internal 
guidance. 

1. “I speak this by permission, and not of commandment” (1 
Cor. vii. 6). 

2. “To the rest speak I, not the Lord” (1 Cor. vii. 12). 

3. “ Concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord ^ 
yet I give my judgment to be faithful as one that hath obtained 
mercy of the Lord. I suppose therefore,” &c. (1 Cor. vii. 25). 

4. “ If any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom,, 
neither the churches of God” (1 Cor. xi. 16). 

N.B .—St Paul has been here giving certain directions; and in 
case any objections might be raised to his dictum, he appeals for 
his authority to the custom of the churches. Had he considered 
his dictum infallibly inspired, he would have based his appeal upon 
that inspiration. 

5. “We believe, and therefore speak” (2 Cor. iv. 13). 


APPENDIX II. 


411 


6. “I speak not by commandment” (2 Cor. viii. 8). 

7. “ Herein I give my advice ” (2 Cor. viii. 10). 

8. “ That which I speak, I speak it not after the Lord, but as 
it were foolishly” (2 Cor. xi. 17). 

9. “I speak foolishly” (2 Cor. xi. 21). 

10. “I speak as a fool” (2 Cor. xi. 23). 

11. “I speak after the manner of men” (Gal. iii. 15). 

12. “I Paul say unto you” (Gal. v. 2). 

13. “I count not myself to have apprehended” (Philip, iii. 13). 

Finally, he sometimes confesses plainly that he is himself in 

doubt as to whether he is writing under internal influx or no. 

Thus, to give one passage by way of example in 1 Cor. vii. 40, 
he says: “ She is more blessed if she remain thus, according to 
my opinion; and I think that I have also a divine influx on the 
matter.” See Note S. on the “ Pneuma.” 

It is to be hoped that these few considerations will assist to¬ 
wards removing the epistles or letters of St Paul from the false 
platform on which they have been placed by ecclesiastical tradition, 
and presenting them in their true and genuine character. 

If this be so, a great step will be gained towards a due appre¬ 
ciation of the entire Bible. 


NOTE C. 

ON THE NATURE OF GOD. 

Chapter ii. page 38. 

“ Matter is illimitable. In other words , it is infinite and eternal; 
and as we cannot conceive of the Deity being outside of what is 
infinite and eternal, He also must be in this sense material .” 

He who ventures to assert that God is in any sense material, 
runs the risk of being branded by the Church as a heretic and 
materialist; the latter term having been invented to describe a. 
believer in what, according to the Church’s view, is a heinous and 
fatal error. And yet it is maintained with equal vehemence by 
the Church, that there is no particle of matter in which God is 
not ; though at the same time she repudiates the idea of being 
pantheistic in doctrine. 

There seems here to be a somewhat strange inconsistency which 
is very difficult of reconciliation. 

Moreover,, the Nicene Creed asserts that God the Son is “of one 
substance with the Father; ” and the 1 st Article declares that “ in 
unity of this Godhead there be three Persons of one substance.” 
If substance is not matter, there is no meaning in words. 


412 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


That the Bible teaches the universality of God in matter is 
evident from the following passages amongst many others :—• 

“ Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit ? or whither shall I flee 
from Thy presence 1 If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there : 
If I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there. If I take the 
wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 
even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold 
me” (Ps. cxxxix. 7-10). 

“ Do not I fill heaven and earth 1 saith the Lord ” (Jer. xxiii. 24). 

“ In Him we live, and move, and have our being ” (Acts xvii. 

28 ). 

“ In Him were all things created, in the heavens, and upon the 
earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones, or 
dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things have been 
created through Him, and unto Him; and He is before all things, 
and in Him all things consist ” (Col. i. 17, Revised Version). 

The last three passages clearly indicate that God is material, in 
the true sense of the word; but the Church has fallen into a con¬ 
fusion of ideas on the subject, owing to the imperfect notion of 
<c matter ” which has hitherto existed in it. That term having 
been confined to the portion of matter which is susceptible to 
our present senses; or, in other words, to the “ gross matter ” 
resulting from the Fall, and therefore essentially connected with 
sin. The instinctive sentiment of thp human breast has naturally 
revolted against the connection of Deity with matter, understand¬ 
ing thereby a connection between the sinless and the sin-stained. 

But when once we realise that the gross substance apparent to 
our senses is merely an accretion over all that is true and pure 
of matter, the difficulty at once disappears, and it becomes a con¬ 
sistent and sublime belief that God is in matter and matter in 
God, coexistent and inseparable; or, in other words, that God is, 
in the highest sense, a material Being. 

This, in the words of Mr Claude G. Montefiore, M.A., in a 
paper lately read before the Jews’ College Literary Society, 
“ brings us close to the central problem in the philosophy of re¬ 
ligion. That problem is to determine the relation of the Deity to 
nature and to man. Religious thought and religious feeling are 
both continually desiring two qualities in the Godhead, the combina¬ 
tion of which inharmonious unity is always of exceeding difficulty. 
According as one quality or another is more rigorously insisted on, 
the character of the entire philosophy which maintains it is deter¬ 
mined. . . . Exclusive stress upon the one quality leads to deism, 
upon the other to pantheism. The problem of all theistic religions 
is to find the higher unity which shall combine and satisfy the 
truths, for mind and heart, which deism and pantheism alike 
contain.” 


APPENDIX II. 


413 


In other words, the two qualities in the Godhead, required by 
the instincts of the human heart, are “ distance ” and “ nearness.” 

The infinite majesty of One who dwells “ in the high and holy 
place,” in the light “ which no man can approach unto,” tends to 
remove God far above all nature, and to foster the sense of His 
immateriality, thus leading to the idea of deism; whilst, on the 
other hand, the conviction of His omnipotence, and the inner 
consciousness of a universal need of His unfailing succour, love, 
and support, tend to bring Him down from His exalted position, 
and to engender the lower aspect of pantheism. 

Both these phases of the conception of the Deity are, in them¬ 
selves, true; but each depends, for its truth, upon its due and pro¬ 
portionate combination with the other. 

It is, to use a homely illustration, like the proportionate com¬ 
bination of oxygen and hydrogen in water. 

Take the right proportions of these two gases, combine them 
chemically together, and water is the result. 

Take too great or too small a quantity of either component, and 
the combination will be spoiled. 

So with the component aspects of the nature of God. 

Combine them in their due proportions, and the true nature of 
God will result. Take either in excess, and a false God appears. 

Further, to make the illustration complete, as in the one case, so 
in the other, the difficulty to be solved is how to combine the com¬ 
ponent parts, even when you have them in their due proportions. 

In chemistry, the problem is solved by an electric current; in 
theology, by the right conception of “ matter.” 

It is the limited idea of gross, sin-polluted matter, which creates 
deism on the one hand, and pantheism on the other. 

Conceive of matter as infinite, eternal, illimitable; divest it 
of its debased accretion; and the infinite, eternal, illimitable 
God stands forth, material in the truest and highest sense,— 
neither the God of the deist nor that of the pantheist, but a 
compound of both, with being, substance, and qualities as essen¬ 
tially different from either as the being, substance, and quality of 
water differ from those of oxygen or hydrogen. 


414 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


NOTE D. 

ON THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST. 

Chapter ii. page 40. 

“ This force it is which , passing through the organism of the 
operator into the hypnotised patient , controls his will , and inspires 
his words and acts ; and in order to do this , it has to penetrate the 
atoms of the ordinary matter which compose the fleshly particles of 
the visible frames of both.” 

Here we have an explanation of miracles, as related in the Bible 
and elsewhere; and we can see at once how it was that Christ had 
such miraculous powers of healing. For owing to the special cir¬ 
cumstances connected with His birth, and the perfect constitution 
•of His human nature, the outer covering of fleshly matter, apparent 
to the senses of others, was so infinitely fine and rarefied that the 
“ material force ” penetrating the atoms of His visible frame was 
•able to work its way out of Him, into the patient operated upon, 
with such little let and hindrance, that its effects were virtually 
instantaneous, and, as it seemed, preternaturally powerful. 

A remarkable confirmation of this view is supplied by a careful 
study of the various modes of dealing with different cases which 
Christ employed, and the degrees of ease and difficulty which He 
experienced in achieving the desired results. For evidently the 
•operation of the “ material force ” would depend not merely on 
■Christ’s own atomic nature, which was constant in all cases, but 
also on the atomic constitution of the fleshly particles of the patients 
operated upon. Some would he more receptive than others to the 
influence of the “ material force ”; while in some cases the density 
of the fleshly particles would be such that the force would be un¬ 
able to penetrate them. 

This receptivity to the “ material force ” Christ designates by the 
term “ faith ”; and so we find that on two separate occasions, at 
least, He was unable to perform any miracles, or mighty works, 
simply, as we are told, because of the “ want of faith ” exhibited 
by the people of the place. Thus, in Matt. xiii. 58, we read, “ He 
did not many mighty works there, because of their unbelief: ” and 
in Mark vi. 5, “ He could there do no mighty work, save that He 
laid His hands upon a few sick folk and healed them. And He 
marvelled because of their unbelief.” 

Setting aside those who were thus impervious to the material 
force which issued from Christ, we find three different degrees 
of receptivity, or “ faith,” in the patients operated upon; and 


APPENDIX II. 


415 


■Christ’s miracles of healing may therefore be divided into three 
■classes, corresponding to these three degrees. 

In the first, or densest class, are included those cases where 
bodily contact between Christ and the patient was necessary. 

In the second class are included those cases where, without 
actual bodily contact, Christ’s will acted on the will of the patient, 
whose “ faith ” was tested by an obedience to an order. 

In the third or highest class are included those cases where the 
faith,” or receptivity, was so powerful that the “ material force ” 
was able to pass from Christ’s organism into that of the patient by 
a simple effort of Christ’s will acting upon the patient’s organism, 
no test of “ faith ” being required. 

We will give a few examples of each class. 

1. Those where actual bodily contact was necessary. 

“ There came a leper and worshipped Him, saying, Lord, if Thou 
wilt, Thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth His hand, 
and touched him, saying, I will, be thou clean. And immediately 
his leprosy was cleansed ” (Matt. viii. 2, 3). See also Mark i. 40, 
41; Luke v. 12, 13. 

“ He took her by the hand, and the maid arose ” (Matt. ix. 25). 
See also Mark v. 41 ; Luke viii. 54. 

“ They bring unto Him one that was deaf, and had an impedi¬ 
ment in his speech; and they beseech Him to put His hand upon 
him. And He took him aside from the multitude, and put His 
fingers into his ears, and He spit, and touched his tongue; and, 
looking up to heaven, He sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, 
that is, Be opened. And straightway his ears were opened, and 
the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain ” (Mark 
vii. 32-34). 

“ Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up ; and he arose ” 
{Mark ix. 27). 

N.B. —In none of the instances in this class is any mention 
made of the “ faith ” of the patient as an active influential factor 
in the operation of the miracle. 

2. Those whose “ faith ” was tested prior to the resulting effect 
of the action of Christ’s will upon theirs. 

“ Then saith He to the sick of the palsy, Arise, take up thy 
bed, and go unto thine house. And he arose, and departed to his 
house ” (Matt. ix. 6, 7). See also Mark ii. 10-12 ; Luke v. 24, 25. 

“ Then saith He to the man, Stretch forth thy hand. And he 
stretched it forth; and it was’ restored whole, like as the other ” 
(Matt. xii. 13). 

“ And when He saw them, He said unto them, Go show your¬ 
selves to the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, 
they were cleansed ” (Luke xvii. 14). 

“Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy son liveth. And the 


416 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


man believed the word that Jesus had said unto him; and he 
went his way ” (John iv. 50). 

N.B. —In the cases of this class, we find the faith of the 
patients or supplicants generally mentioned as special factors in 
the healing potency. 

3. Those whose “faith” was so powerful, that neither bodily 
contact nor test was required by Christ. 

Of this class, the following are among the most illustrious 
examples:— 

The Roman centurion at Capernaum (Matt. viii. 5-13). See 
also Luke vii. 1-10. 

The Syrophoenician woman of Canaan (Matt. xv. 21-28). See 
also Mark vii. 24-30. 

The woman with the issue of blood (Matt. ix. 20-22). See also- 
Mark v. 25-34; Luke viii. 43-48. 

Blind Bartimeus at the gate of Jericho (Mark x. 46-52). See 
also Luke xviii. 35-43. 

N.B. —In each case of this class, Christ distinctly avers that, 
the “ faith ” of the applicants was the principal operating cause of 
the healing potency. “ Thy faith hath saved thee; ” “ Thy faith 
hath made thee whole; ” “ According to thy faith, so be it done 
unto thee,” &c. 

This point is very important, and we will therefore make it as. 
clear as possible. When Christ has to put forth physical energy 
Himself, and place Himself in bodily contact with the subject 
operated upon, no mention whatever is made of the faith of the 
patients. When the effects are produced by co-operation between, 
the wills of Christ and the patient, such co-operation being tested 
by obedience to an order, the faith of the latter is stated to have, 
had its influence, more or less, on the results produced. And when 
no physical contact, or test of submission of will, is necessary, the. 
faith is said to have actually effected the cure. 

Three other classes of miracles, besides those of healing, demand, 
our passing notice. 

(a.) Those effected on the powers of nature. 

( b .) The casting out of devils. 

(c.) The raising of the dead. 

(a.) Those miracles which were effected over the powers of 
nature, may be stated as follows:— 

Changing water into wine (John ii. 1-11). 

Stilling the tempest (Matt. viii. 23-27 ; Mark iv. 37-41; Luke- 
viii. 23-25). 

Walking on the sea (Matt. xiv. 25; John vi. 19-21). 

Feeding the multitudes (Matt. xiv. 15-21 ; Mark vi. 35-44;. 
Luke ix. 12-17; John vi. 5-14; Matt. xv. 32-38 ; Mark viii. 1-9).. 

Miraculous draughts of fishes (Luke v. 4-11; John xxi. 3-8). 


APPENDIX II. 


417 


Withering the fig-tree (Matt. xxi. 17-22; Mark xi. 12-14). 

It is only when we realise the intimate connection which exists 
"between all the parts of creation, and especially between those 
parts popularly but erroneously distinguished as matter and mind, 
that we can understand how easily the “ material force ” operating 
through Christ’s organism, being perfect and sublime as it was, 
could produce results upon the atomic particles and the forces of 
nature, which would appear miraculously astounding to an ordinary 
mind. 

(b.) In the detailed accounts of the various instances of ejection 
of evil spirits, we can trace clearly and conclusively the existence 
and operation of the “ material force,” or Swa/us tov irviv/xarosy 
through the organism of Christ; and a wonderful glimpse is re¬ 
vealed to us of the reality of the invisible world of spirits, as well 
as of the close affinity and interaction between the seen and un¬ 
seen portions of our universe. 

See Matt. viii. 28-34; xvii. 18; Mark i. 23-27, 33, 34 ; v. 
1-20; ix. 17-29 ; Luke iv. 33-37, 41 ; ix. 38-42. 

(c.) The consideration of the close proximity to this earth of 
those who have but lately departed from the flesh, taken in con¬ 
junction with the infinitely refined atomic constitution of Christ, 
removes all difficulty in the way of comprehending those three 
miracles which have always been considered the most stupendous 
displays of His supernatural power—namely, the restoring to life of 
Jairus’s daughter, the widow’s son at Nain, and Lazarus of Bethany. 

It has been too much the habit of the apologists of Christianity 
to assume that there is no middle course between asserting the 
absolutely supernatural character of Christ’s miracles, and the deny¬ 
ing them altogether. Thus, in their ardent anxiety to uphold the 
evidences of the truth of their religion, they have been driven 
to take their stand on an untenable position, because their view of 
Christ’s so-called miracles has been one opposed to the rational 
instincts of the human mind. 

So far from being supernatural, or from contravening the law 
and order of the universe, Christ’s wonderful works are the natural 
results of the contact between His person, atomically constructed 
as it was, and the atomic constitutions of the persons and things 
with whom He dealt. 

The miraculous, or supernatural, wonder would have been, if 
these forces coming into contact had not produced the results 
which followed. 


2 d 


418 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


NOTE E. 

ON TRUE THEOLOGY. 

Chapter ii. p. 42. 

“ It is by an effort of his affections , and not by one of his brain, 
that he can fit this key to the lock of knowledge.” 

When the writer of this note passed his “ Little-go ” examina¬ 
tion as an undergraduate at Cambridge, the best paper on Paley’s 
£ Evidences of Christianity ’ was done by a Jew named Numa 
Hartog, who was afterwards Senior Wrangler. Of this the writer 
was himself informed by the Examiner who set the papers. The 
intellectual faculties of the Jew enabled him to grasp the argu¬ 
ments logically ; but this had no effect upon his affectional emotions 
or on his ponscience, for he remained as steadfast a Jew as ever. 

We have quoted this instance, as an example of the truth so 
frequently insisted upon in the Bible, and yet so strangely ignored 
in practice by those who profess to regulate their lives by the 
teaching of the Scriptures—namely, that the knowledge of true 
religion is to be attained by the heart, and not by the mind, or, in 
other words, by the affections, instead of the brain. 

We have no intention to use this example with a view to 
showing that the Christian is all right and the Jew all wrong, or 
vice versa. We merely desire to point out how absurd it is to 
suppose that people are to be converted by mere argumentative 
evidence. 

No amount of intellectual disquisition or controversy will help 
to elucidate the mysteries of divine wisdom; for, if we are to 
believe what is written in the Bible, the pursuit of knowledge 
must be conducted along the pathway of practical heart-affection, 
and not through the dark and mazy labyrinths of mental meta¬ 
physics. 

It is the “ heart,” not the “ mind,” that is appealed to in the 
Bible, as necessary to be illumined for the reception of Gods 
truth. Countless passages might be cited in proof of this; we 
will content ourselves with giving a few. 

“ Oh that there were such an heart in them, that they would 
fear me,” &c. (Deut. v. 29). 

“ If thou shalt seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find Him, if 
thou seek Him with all thy heart and with all thy soul ” (Deut. iv. 
29). 

<£ I will give them an heart to know me ” (Jer. xxiv. 7). 

££ I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their 


APPENDIX II. 


419 


hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And 
they, shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man 
his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for they shall all know me, 
from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saitli the Lord ” 
(Jer. xxxi. 33, 34). 

“Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” 
(Matt. v. 8). 

“ Be ye of an understanding heart ” (Prov. viii. 5). 

“ Wisdom resteth in the heart of him that hath understanding ” 
(Prov. xiv. 33). 

“ The wise in heart will receive commandments ” (Prov. x. 8). 

“ With the heart man believeth unto righteousness ” (Rom. x. 10). 

“The heart of him that hath understanding seeketh knowledge” 
(Prov. xv. 14). 

Again, it is owing to a defect in the heart, not the mind , that 
men fail to know and understand God’s mysteries, according to 
the Bible. Thus:— 

“ A deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot 
deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand ? ” 
(Isa. xliv. 20). 

“ Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; 
and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this 
people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest 
they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand 
with their heart, and convert, and be healed ” (Isa. vi. 9, 10). 

“ 0 Lord, why hast Thou made us to err from Thy ways, and 
hardened our heart from Thy fear?” (Isa. lxiii. 17). 

“ This people hath a revolting and rebellious heart; they are 
revolted and gone. Neither say they in their heart, Let us now 
fear the Lord our God. . . . Your iniquities have turned away 
these things, and your sins have withholden good things from 
you” (Jer. v. 23, 25). 

In like manner, we learn from the Bible how vain and useless is 
a mere intellectual search after the truth, and how impossible it is 
to treat religion as s if it were a science which could be solved by 
the investigations and discussions of mere mental inquirers. 

“ Canst thou by searching find out God ? canst thou find out 
the Almighty unto perfection ? It is as high as heaven; what 
canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? The 
measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than t}ie 
sea” (Job xi. 7-9). 

“ I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the 
work that is done under the sun; because, though a man labour to 
seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea farther, though a wise 
man think, to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it ” (Eccles. 
viii. 17), 


420 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


“ Then thought I to understand this, but it was too hard for me; 
until I went into the sanctuary of God” (Ps. lxxiii. 16, 17). 

“ Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and 
hast revealed them unto babes” (Matt. xi. 25). 

“ Where is the wise ? where is the scribe ? where is the dis- 
puter of this world ? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of 
this world 1 For after that in the wisdom of God the world by 
wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the simplicity of the 
thing preached to save them that believe” (1 Cor. i. 20, 21). 

“ Ye see our calling, brethren, how that not many wise men 
after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called; but 
God hath chosen the simple things of the world to confound the 
wise” (1 Cor. i. 26, 27). 

“ The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God ; 
for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, be¬ 
cause they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. ii. 14). 

Lastly, we are frequently taught in tl^e Bible that it is by 
following the dictates of our consciences and actually rendering the 
heart-service of our whole lives and beings to God, not by mere 
meditation and theorising, nor by discussion and controversy, that 
we shall be enabled to solve the mysteries of religion, and to gain 
the highest knowledge of God and of His hidden truth. 

“ Did not thy father eat and drink, and do judgment and justice, 
and then it was well with him ? He judged the cause of the poor 
and needy ; then it was well with him; was not this to know 
me? saith the Lord” (Jer. xxii. 16, 17). 

“ Why do ye not understand my speech ? Even because ye 
cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the 
lusts of your father ye will to do ” (John viii. 43, 44). 

“ If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the 
doctrine” (John vii. 17). 

“ He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is 
that loveth me ; and he that loveth me shall be loved of my 
Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself unto him ” 
(John xiv. 21). 

“ Keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane 
and vain babblings, and oppositions of science, falsely so called; 
which some professing have erred concerning the faith ” (1 Tim. 
vi. 20, 21). 

“ Strive not about words to no profit but to the subverting of 
thfe hearers. Study to show thyself approved unto God, a work¬ 
man that needeth not to be ashamed, holding a straight course in 
the word of truth. But shun profane and vain babblings, for they 
will increase unto more ungodliness” (2 Tim. ii. 14-16). 

Such are the manifest declarations of Scripture. Yet, in the 
face of all, we have theology set before us as a science, like 


APPENDIX II. 


421 


geology, biology, or any other “ ology ”; containing, like them, 
its long-sounding definitions and dogmatical statements; teeming, 
like them, with matter of continual controversy, and affording sub¬ 
jects of endless heartburnings and disputes ; differing only from 
them in this respect, however, that it is a “ science, falsely so 
called.” For no amount of mental culture or scientific research 
will of themselves bring the inquirer any nearer to the knowledge 
of the truth ; no collection of dogmas invented by man and pro¬ 
fanely palmed off upon God, will avail to enlighten the humble 
student. 

Though our universities may provide their well-paid professors 
of theology, and though learned disquisitions without number may 
proceed from their pens, these will but serve to “ darken counsel,” 
and hinder the progress of the pursuit of true knowledge; for the 
river of wisdom flows into the organism of man through the chan¬ 
nel of his affections and not of his intellectand it is in the pure, 
simple, self-denying love of the godlike heart, not in the abstruse 
and metaphysical dogmas of churches and creeds, that the truth of 
God shall be revealed. 

There is no one more highly endowed with intellectual know¬ 
ledge of the mysteries of God, no more profound and learned theo¬ 
logian, than the devil himself. 


NOTE F. 

ON THE PURIFICATION OF THE HUMAN ORGANISM. 

Chapter v. p. 86. 

“ The first experience of which the man engaged in this attempt 
becomes conscious is, that he is the arena in which two strongly an¬ 
tagonistic currents come into collision, and that he is frustrated in 
his attempt to open himself only to that which is pure, by a flood 
of that which is impure, seeking ingress by the opening which 
his efforts to receive a greater measure of the pure effected in his 
organism .” 

It was to this internal conflict of antagonistic currents that St 
Paul so often alluded when he spoke of the warfare between the 
“ flesh ” and the “ spirit.” 

By the “ flesh ” is signified the impure, inverted, and destruc¬ 
tive forces, the influx of which into human nature brought about 
originally the gross fleshly accretion of human organisms, and the 
action of which tends to render those organisms even more gross 
and fleshly ; whilst by the “ spirit ” is meant the pure, elevating, 


422 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


life-giving force entitled the “ pneuma ” which originally assimilated 
human nature to the divine, and the renewed influx of which into 
human organisms tends to restore them to their pristine condition. 

These two principles, being antagonistic to each other, cause the 
agonising struggle which a person experiences in his inner con¬ 
science, as soon as he lays himself open to the influence of the 
“pneuma.” In the absence of either of these opposing set of 
forces, there is no consciousness of a struggle, and in consequence 
there is peace; but the one is the fatal, lethargic peace of death, 
described by Christ when He says, “ When a strong man armed 
keepeth his palace, his goods are in peacethe other is the 
eternal peace, which comes as a consequence of victory after 
struggle, and which is characterised as “ the peace of God, which 
passeth all understanding.” It was to bring this peace eventually 
to the human race that Christ was born into the world; hence He 
was foretold by Isaiah, under the title of the “ Prince of Peace”; 
hence also, at His birth, the angel-host proclaimed “ Peace on 
earth ”; and hence again, before His death, He bequeathed this 
legacy,—“ Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not 
as the world giveth, give I unto you.” 

But between these two stages of peace, the false and the true, 
there must come to every one the period of conflict. Hence, even 
whilst promising His peace, Christ added, “ In the world ye shall 
have tribulationand hence He gave utterance to that apparent 
paradox,—“ Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I 
came, not to send peace, but a sword.” 

That St Paul himself experienced this internal struggle, and that 
it caused him unutterable agony, is evident from his own con¬ 
fession: “We know that the law is that of pneuma; but I am 
fleshly, sold under sin. For what I accomplish, I do not know ; 
for I do not practise wdiat I desire; but what I hate, that I do. If 
then I do that which I do not desire, I assent to the law that it is 
good. Now then, no longer do I accomplish this, but the sin 
which dwelleth in me. For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, 
dwelleth no good: for the will is present with me ; but how to 
accomplish the right, I do not find out. For I do not do good, as 
I desire to do ; but the evil which I do not desire, that I practise. 
I find then the law that, though I desire to do the right, the evil is 
present with me. For I sympathise with the law of God accord¬ 
ing to my inner man ; but I see another law in my members 
conflicting with the law of my mind, and enslaving me to the 
law of sin which is in my members. A miserable man am I! 
Who shall free me from this body of death 1 I thank God 
through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, I myself serve the 
law of God in my mind; but in my flesh, the law of sin.” 
(Rom. vii. 14-25.) 


APPENDIX II. 


423 


Again, the same apostle, in his Epistle to the Galatians, describes 
the combatants on either side of this internal conflict when he 
says: “ The flesh cherishes desires in opposition to the pneuma, 
and the pneuma in opposition to the flesh; and these are antagon¬ 
istic to each other : in order that ye may not do the things which 
ye may desire” (Gal. v. 17). 

That this conflict, though essentially subsurface, affects the 
whole organism, body, soul, and spirit, is also evident from several 
passages of Scripture, as well as from practical experience. 

Thus it is that all three parts of the human organism are spoken 
of in conjunction, when, in writing to the Thessalonians, St Paul 
says : “ The God of peace make you holy throughout your whole 
beings, and may your entire organisms, spirit, soul, and body, be 
preserved blameless in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ ” 
(1 Thess. v. 23). 

The painful disturbance caused in the organism of one who is 
opening himself to the higher life, by the conflicting elements of 
flesh and pneuma, may be appropriately illustrated in the follow¬ 
ing manner. 

The human organism resembles a vessel which has been filled in 
every part with foul and polluted air. A vessel so filled is puri¬ 
fied by two means, which may be termed positive and negative ; 
or, in other words, infasive and effusive. That is to say, two 
channels have to be opened, the one for the expulsion of the foul 
air, the other for the inlet of the pure. These two channels must 
be open at the same time, and the twofold process must go on 
simultaneously. The negative or effusive process is not sufficient 
of itself, as there would be produced merely a vacuum, which is 
fatal to life. The positive or infusive process is equally inoperative 
by itself, as, until the foul air is at least in part expelled, there is 
no due room for the pure. 

For the purposes of purification, it is evident that three things 
are necessary— 

1. The opening of channels for the expulsion of the foul air. 

2. The opening of channels for the infusion of the pure. 

3. The closing of all channels by which a fresh supply of foul 
air might gain admission. 

If these three precautions are rigidly observed, the vessel will 
gradually become entirely freed from all pollution, and filled with 
pure untainted atmosphere. 

But meanwhile, during the process of purification, there will be 
a severe atmospherical disturbance in the vessel. The currents of 
the inflowing pure air will come into collision with the opposing 
currents of the outflowing impure. 

This disturbance will be all the stronger, if the channels of in¬ 
gress and egress are in close proximity to each other; whilst, if 


424 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


it should happen that the two were identical, it is evident that the 
process would be rendered far more difficult, gradual, irregular, and 
hazardous; and all these drawbacks would be immensely intensified 
if, in addition, the same channel could become the means of letting 
in new supplies of foul air. 

Yet this is exactly the case with our human organisms. They 
have become filled with foul and polluted spiritual atmosphere. 
The Greek word a/iaprui (hamartia), used for “ sin ” in the New 
Testament, means “ that which vitiates or pollutes ; ” and the 
phrase translated “ forgiveness of sins,” means literally “ expulsion 
of that which vitiates.” See Note G, p. 425. 

The pneuma is simply the pure spiritual essence, which must 
take the place of the “ hamartia ” when it is being expelled from 
the human organism. 

The expulsion of the “ hamartia ” and the infusion of the pneuma 
must go on simultaneously, and be in exact correlation to each 
other. 

This is exactly what Christ meant w T hen He said : “ When the 
unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketli through dry places, 
seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return to my 
house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth 
it empty , swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with 
himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they 
enter in and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse 
than the first ” (Matt. xii. 43-45). 

The mistake that Christ wished to guard His disciples against, 
by this melancholy picture, was the idea of imagining that the ex¬ 
pulsion of sins from the human organism would be sufficient with¬ 
out the corresponding infusion of the pure pneumatic essence to 
take the place of that which is expelled. Now, inasmuch as the 
organic channels for the expulsion of the foul nature, are identical 
with those for the admission of the pure; and inasmuch as, more¬ 
over, the self-same channels, unless carefully guarded, can easily be 
utilised by the evil ones for the injection of new supplies of impu¬ 
rity, it will be at once understood how great must be the disturb¬ 
ance, and consequently the agony, which is caused throughout the 
entire organism, when these opposing currents come into collision. 

It will be seen that the whole process must, from its very 
nature, be gradual , 'painful , irregular, and liable to error: gradual, 
because the infiltration will go on very slowly, the moral atmo¬ 
sphere becoming little by little purer as the foul is ejected and the 
pure admitted ; painful, because of the violent disturbances within 
the system, caused by the collision of opposing moral currents; 
irregular, because, as has been shown, foul currents may be, and 
often are, admitted by the very channels which are opened for the 
inlet of the pure, thus contaminating, again and again, the organism 


APPENDIX II. 


425 


which is being purified; ahd liable to error, because it is often very 
difficult to distinguish the pure currents from the impure. 

But yet, notwithstanding these dangers, drawbacks, and delays, 
if we are only faithful to our trust,—which is to keep careful watch 
over our channels, so that the purifying element may be constantly 
flowing in, the vitiating constantly flowing out, and all things per¬ 
taining to the gross elements of our fallen earth-nature prevented 
from obtaining an entrance,—if we thus co-operate with Christ 
in His saving work, then by slow, painful, yet sure and certain 
progress, will our whole beings regain their pristine condition, and 
contain within them, filling them through and through, and per¬ 
meating every atom of their organisms, the perfect purity of their 
biune likeness to the Biune God. 


NOTE G. 

ON THE TERM “ FORGIVENESS OF SINS.” 

Chapter v. p. 89. 

“From this it is plain that what is generally termed ‘ sin* is, in 
fact, the outward and visible sign of infestation .” 

The term “ forgiveness of sins,” so frequently met with in the 
English translations of the New Testament, and incorporated into 
the Creeds as a leading dogma of Christendom, conveys to the 
general mind an erroneous impression. This is owing chiefly to 
the false doctrine of vicarious sacrifice, upon which we shall dwell 
in Note H. 

There are three Greek verbs in the New Testament which are 
-translated in our versions “ forgive ” or “ remit.” These three 
-verbs are o.(f>Lrj/xL, aTroTLdrjfu, and x a P t ^°/ xa< - Now a<j>ir)iu means 
simply to “send forth,” or to “expel”; airoriO-gpL, to “put away ; 
and to “ show favour.” Not one of the three, except 

by severely straining its meaning, signifies “pardon through a 
vicarious sacrifice.” 

1. The word a-rroTLOrjpL is only used once, in Acts viii. 22, 
where the passage, “ if perhaps the thought of thine heart may he 
forgiven thee,” ought to be rendered, “ if perchance the purpose of 
thine heart may be put away from thee”—an entirely different 
meaning. 

2. The verb x a P^°l xaL occurs merely in the few following passages, 
where it invariably bears the signification of “ show favour, or 
-‘oblige”: 2 Cor. ii. 7, 10; xii. 13; Eph. iv. 32 ; Col. ii. 13. 

Thus, for example, the well-known text in Eph. iv. 32, rendered 


426 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


“ Be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another,, 
even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you? should he, “ Be 
ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, showing favour one to 
another, even as God, in Christ , hath shown favour to you.” 

Here is an excellent example of the manner in which the English 
translation has, to use a common phrase, been “ doctored,” to suit, 
the dogma of vicarious sacrifice. As it is read in the Authorised 
Version, the text explicitly states that pardon is obtained by us 
from God, owing to the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf; whereas- 
St Paul simply averred the great truth that God had shown favour 
to us in the mission of Christ. 

3. The force of as we have already said, is to “ expel ” ^ 

and when it is used in regard to the relation of sin to God and 
man, it invariably means the actual expulsion of sin and its 
concomitants from man by God,—not the withholding of a just 
punishment from a guilty criminal, because of the sacrifice of an 
innocent victim in his stead. 

A few examples will show how this simple meaning has been 
perverted in our English New Testament. 


Authorised Version. 

Matthew ix. 2-7. 

“ Jesus, seeing their faith, said unto 
the sick of the palsy, Son, be of good 
cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee. 
And, behold, certain of the scribes 
said within themselves, This man 
blasphemeth. 

“And Jesus, knowing their thoughts, 
said, Wherefore think ye evil in your 
hearts ? For whether is easier, to say, 
Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, 
Arise, and walk ? But that ye may 
know that the Son of man hath power 
on earth to forgive sins, (then saith 
He to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, 
take up thy bed, and go unto thy house. 
And he arose, and departed to his 
house.” 


Matthew xii. 31. 

“ All manner of sin and blasphemy 
shall be forgiven unto men ; but the 
blasphemy against the Holy Ghust 
shall not be forgiven unto men. And 
whosoever speaketh a word against 
the Son of man, it shall be forgiven 
him: but whosoever speaketh against 
the Holy Ghost, it shall not be for¬ 
given him, neither in this world, 
neither in the world to come.” 


Correct Rendering. 

“ Jesus, seeing their faith, said to- 
the paralytic, Cheer up, my son; thy 
sins have been expelled from thee. 
And, behold, certain of the scribes- 
said amongst themselves, This person 
blasphemes. 

“And Jesus, observing their con¬ 
siderations, said, Wherefore do ye 
consider evil in your hearts ? For- 
which of the two is the easier, to say. 
Thy sins have been expelled from 
thee ; or to say, Arise and walk ? In. 
order that ye may know then that, 
the Son of man has authority on earth 
to expel sins, (then He says to the 
paralytic,) Arise, take up thy bed, 
and go away to thy house. And - 
having risen up, he went away to his- 
own house.” 

“ Every sin and blasphemy shall be 
expelled from men ; but the blasphemy 
of the pneuma shall not be expelled 
from men. And whosoever speaks a- 
speech against the Son of man, it. 
(i.e., the spirit which causes him thus, 
to speak) shall be expelled from him ; 
but whosoever speaks against the. 
pneuma that is holy, it shall not be 
expelled from him, neither in this 
present age, nor in the age to come.” 


APPENDIX II. 


427 


Authorised Version. Correct Rendering. 

Matthew xxvi. 28. 


“This is my blood of the new 
testament, which is shed for many for 
the remission of sins.” 

Mark iv. 12. 

“ Lest at any time they should be 
converted, and their sins should be 
forgiven them.” 

Luke i. 77. 

“ To give knowledge of salvation 
unto His people by the remission of 
their sins.” 

Luke vii. 47-50. 

“ Her sins which are many, are for¬ 
given ; for she loved much : but to 
whom little is forgiven the same loveth 
little. And He said unto her, Thy 
sins are forgiven. And they that sat 
at meat with Him, began to say within 
themselves, Who is this that forgives 
sins also ? And He said to the woman, 
Thy faith hath saved thee: go in 
peace.” 

Luke xxiv. 47. 

“That repentance and remission of 
sins shall be preached in His name.” 

John xx. 22, 23. 

“He breathed on them, and saith 
to them, Receive ye the Holy 
Ghost: whose soever sins ye remit, 
they are remitted unto them ; and 
whose soever sins ye retain, they are 
retained.” 

Acts ii. 38. 

“ Repent, and be baptised every 
one of you in the name of Jesus Christ 
for the remission of sins, and ye shall 
receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” 

Ephesians i. 7. 

** In whom we have redemption 
through His blood, the forgiveness of 
sins.” 

Hebrews ix. 22. 

“ Without shedding of blood is no 
remission.” 

* 1 John i. 9. 

“ If we confess our sins, He is faith¬ 
ful and just to forgive us our sins, and 
to cleanse us from all unrighteous¬ 
ness.” 


“ This is my blood of the new dis¬ 
pensation, which is being poured out. 
on behalf of many with a view to ex¬ 
pulsion of sins.” 

“ Lest they should ever turn, and 
their sins should be expelled from 
them.” 


“ To give knowledge of salvation 
to His people, in expulsion of their 
sins.” 


“ Her sins, though many, have 
been expelled, because she loved, 
much ; but the person from whom 
little is expelled, loveth little. He 
said, then, to her, Thy sins have- 
been expelled. And His companions 
began to say amongst themselves, 
Who is this who expels sins also ?' 
And He said to the woman, Thy faith 
hath saved thee : go in peace.” 

“That a change of mind and ex¬ 
pulsion of sins shall be preached in 
His name.” 

“ He breathed on them, and saith 
to them: Receive a holy pneuma. 
Whose soever sins ye expel, they are 
expelled from them ; and whose soever 
sins ye hold fast, they are held fast.” 


“ Repent, and let each of you bn 
baptised in the name of Jesus Christ 
for the expulsion of sins ; and ye 
shall receive the gift of the holy 
pneuma.” 

“ In whom we have redemption, 
through His blood, the expulsion of' 
transgressions.” 

“ Without shedding of blood expul¬ 
sion is not generated.” 

“ If we admit our sins, He is faith¬ 
ful and just, so that He will expel 
our sins, and make us pure from all 
unrighteousness.” 


428 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


Many of these passages, which seem at first to be very obscure 
•and incomprehensible, become perfectly plain and intelligible when 
we bear in mind that all sin is an infestation, and that when “ sins ” 
ure spoken of, “ infestations ” are thereby signified. 

We are apt to think of sins, as if they consisted of an aggrega¬ 
tion of so many sinful thoughts, words, and deeds; whereas these 
•are merely the outward manifestations of the real sins which infest 
•our nature. 

Thus, to use a simple illustration— 

A person is afflicted with a disease, say, for example, the small¬ 
pox. A quantity of noxious eruptions break out in consequence 
•all over the surface of his body. These are not the disease, but 
the outward manifestations merely, of the disease which infests 
the body within. 

Expel the disease, and the cause of the eruptions disappears, 
•and with it the eruptions themselves. 

So with the infestations of sin. The only true salvation is the 
expulsion of the evil which infests our natures. Forgiveness, in 
the accepted use of the word, has not the slightest effect in pro¬ 
ducing the required expulsion; and therefore forgiveness has 
nothing to do with salvation. 

Christ came to save, not to forgive, nor to effect a reconciliation 
between man and a vindictive, malicious God, \v r ho needed the 
•sacrifice of His Son, before His awful wrath could be appeased. 
God is Love; and being Love, He has secured to man, through 
Christ, a means whereby sin and its accompaniments may be ac¬ 
tually expelled from human nature. This is “ the force of the 
pneuma,” rjhvva/xis tov ttvcv paros, so frequently spoken of in the 
JNew Testament. 


NOTE H. 

ON THE DOGMA OF THE ATONEMENT. 

Chapter v. page 96. 

“A scheme for the salvation of man has been constructed by 
human invention, as opposed to the spirit of the divinely inspired 
life of the pure Being whose teaching it records, as it must be 
revolting to all who have ever felt , however faintly, the ine.jfable 
touch of the Great All-Father and All-Mother, thrilling the inner 
■sense by contact with the Word made flesh” 

The particular dogma here alluded to is one of the fundamental 
doctrines of so-called Christianity; and in its utter fallacy, together 
with the insult which it offers to the God of justice and love, is 


APPENDIX II. 


429* 


probably to be found one of the main secrets of the failure of the 
religion to work out the objects for which Christ came. 

It is 'well to state the dogma, which is commonly known as that 
of “justification by faith,” in as plain and simple terms as possible- 
It is, then, as follows :— 

“ All the human race, with one solitary exception, having, sinned 
against the laws of God,—have incurred guilt deserving of the 
severest punishment. These guilty criminals are told that God 
has visited His full wrath upon the One only innocent man, in 
order that those who merited chastisement might escape scot-f-ree. 
But this escape from punishment is made to depend upon whether 
or no they believe that God has really perpetrated this most gross- 
act of injustice. Those who believe it will not only save them¬ 
selves from chastisement, but will receive a rich reward; those 
who do not believe such a thing will be visited with punishments 
of increased severity.” 

It will be acknowledged that the doctrine is here fairly and 
tersely stated. 

What does it amount to? We can best understand it by a 
simple illustration. In a certain school, an offence deserving serious 
punishment has been committed by every scholar except one. The 
master, well knowing this to be the case, calls the one obedient 
boy out of the schoolroom. The rest of the pupils are then 
addressed by an assistant-master in the following terms: “ Boys,, 
you are well aware that you all deserve to be severely punished- 
I am desired to inform you that, because you are all guilty, your 
kind, good, just master has taken the one innocent boy out of the 
room, and has given him a sound flogging in your stead. Those 
who believe what I have told you, hold up your hands ! ” Some 
of the boys, delighted at the prospect of escaping punishment, 
respond immediately by raising their hands; whilst others, im¬ 
pelled by their sense of justice, reply—“ We cannot believe, sir, 
that our master has acted in so terribly unjust a manner. ' You 
must have been mistaken ; the boy who is innocent cannot possibly 
have been punished because we are guilty. We would rather 
suffer punishment ourselves than accept pardon on those terms.” 

“Very well, then,” replies the assistant-master, “as you do not* 
believe what I have told you, and as you are so proud as to refuse 
pardon on these conditions, come out and be thrashed.” So the 
sneaks, who applaud their master’s goodness in saving their backs, 
even at the expense of an innocent victim, are rewarded with a 
prize; while the honest-hearted lads, who refuse to give their 
master credit for gross injustice, are branded with pride, and made 
to suffer a severe punishment. 

We see at once the absurdity of this, and its utter violation of 
the first principles of rectitude. We see that either the master 


430 


SCIENTIFIC .RELIGION. 


was guilty of the most flagrant injustice, or else that the statement 
made by the assistant-master was absolutely and entirely false. In 
■either case, we see what a pernicious effect on the boys themselves 
the inculcation of such a belief would have; how, trained on such 
principles, they would inevitably grow up false, self-seeking crea¬ 
tures, with utterly distorted notions of right and wrong. 

Nor would the case be altered in the slightest degree, unless 
indeed it were aggravated, if the innocent boy happened to be the 
master’s own son, or if he voluntarily offered himself to be punished 
instead of the others. The injustice on the master’s part would 
remain undiminished. And yet the Christian doctrine, as com¬ 
monly accepted, imputes to God an act from which the mind 
instinctively rebels in the case of a man. 

Now it is to be especially observed that throughout the whole 
teaching of Christ Himself, there is not one word that sanctions 
this erroneous dogma, not one hint of His being punished, in order 
that the wrath of God against guilty man may be appeased. He 
•did, indeed, lay great and frequent stress upon the necessity of His 
death in connection with the accomplishment of His mission, but 
■never once in any manner that exhibited that death as a propitia¬ 
tory sacrifice and offering for sin; though, at the same time, it is 
not difficult to see how His followers so soon fell into the errone¬ 
ous view which has tainted Christianity with its baleful influence 
ever since. Unable to discern the real meaning of Christ’s death, 
and imbued with the Jewish idea of vicarious sacrifice, the early 
teachers of Christianity concluded that that death must have been 
in the nature of a propitiatory offering; and thus, as is shown by 
the writings of Paul, Peter, and John, almost from the very com¬ 
mencement of the history of the religion, the great object of Christ’s 
all-important work was buried in the quagmire of an erroneous 
dogma, utterly incompatible with the nature of God, and sufficient 
of itself to account for the failure of Christianity. We have taken 
great pains to collect all Christ’s allusions to His coming death. 
These may be divided into the following classes:— 

1. Statements concerning the fact of His approaching passion, 
death, burial, and resurrection. See Matt. xvi. 21 ; xvii. 22, 23 ; 
xx. 17 ; xxvi. 2 ; Mark viii. 31; ix. 31; x. 33 ; Luke ix. 22 ; xviii. 
31 ; xxiv. 6, 7; John ii. 19 ; viii. 28. 

2. Statements as to the voluntary nature of His death. See 
John x. 11, 15, 17, 18; xv. 13. 

3. Statements as to the purpose and effect of His death. See 
John iii. 14-17 ; xii. 24, 32; Matt. xx. 28 ; xxvi. 28; Mark x. 45. 

Now if all these passages be studied, it will be found that not 
one of them can by any possibility be construed into an allusion 
to a “ propitiatory sacrifice,” with the exception of the last three, 
those, namely, from Matt. xx. 28; xxvi. 28; Mark x. 45. In the 


APPENDIX II. 


431 


first and third passages, Christ says, " The Son of man came to 
give His life a ransom for many; ” and in the second passage, 
“ This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many 
for” (or, as the Eevised Version more correctly puts it, “into”) 
the remission of sins.” 

It is true the English words “ ransom ” and “ remission ” might 
imply a propitiatory sacrifice; but if we turn to the original text, 
we find that the Greek word for “ ransom ” is X.vTpov, which comes 
from Xva), “ to set free ”; whilst the Greek for “ remission ” is 
«^>€o-i 5 , which comes from a^irjpu, “ to send forth ” or “ expel.” 
Thus, in the first statement, Christ says that He came to give His 
life in order to set many free from sin; and in the second state¬ 
ment He says that His blood was shed in order to expel sin from 
many. 

Both these statements are therefore identical, and simply mean 
that Christ’s death was to he necessary for the setting free of sin- 
hound humanity from the thraldom into which the fall of man 
brought them. This was, indeed, the exact and literal object and 
effect of that death, not in the manner and sense so ignorantly 
imputed by the dogmas of the Church, but in a far more real and 
-efficacious way. 


NOTE I. 

ON IMPLICIT OBEDIENCE TO THE DICTATES OF CONSCIENCE. 

Chapter vi. pages 114, 115. 

“ It implies a distinct want of faith , if a mans conscience clearly 
shows him that he is violating it, not to obey the impulse it sug¬ 
gests at all hazards. God does not act thus directly upon the in¬ 
most essence of man's nature , without having provided a satisfaction 
for the craving after truth , which the uneasiness thus engendered 
indicates .” 

The Bible is full of evidences of this truth, whether in the way 
of precept, example, or warning. The absolute necessity of follow¬ 
ing the dictates of conscience, whether it be to avoid evil or to do 
good, and of leaving the results to God, however improbable it 
may appear, humanly speaking, that a favourable issue can follow 
this implicit obedience, is the lesson which we are thus taught. 

We will take these points in order. 

1. Dictates of conscience to avoid evil. 

The Scriptural precepts on this point are so numerous, that it is 
impossible to quote them all; we will, however, state one or two 
of the most emphatic. 


432 • 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


“There hath no temptation taken you, but such as man can 
bear; but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted 
above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also 
the way of escape, that ye may be able to endure it ” (1 Cor. 
x. 13). 

“ The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of tempta¬ 
tion” (2 Pet. ii. 9). 

“ In that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is ablo 
to succour them that are tempted” (Heb. ii. 18). 

Balaam, Saul, the disobedient prophet of Bethel, David, Judas, 
and Pilate, are all sad cases of warning against the fatal results of 
disobeying the voice of conscience when it would dissuade from 
the commission of evil. 

On the other hand, we have many notable examples of the? 
blessings which result from obeying the warnings of conscience. 

Joseph, when tempted by Potiphar’s wife; Shadrach, Meshach, 
and Abed-nego, who preferred the horrors of the fiery furnace to- 
violating their instincts of rectitude ; Daniel, Stephen, and the first 
apostles of Christianity, all bear testimony to the same great truth. 

2. Dictates of conscience to perform active good. 

Abraham, when obeying in faith the order to sacrifice his only 
son; Joshua, when leading his army for seven days around the- 
walls of Jericho; the widow of Sarepta, when sharing with Elijah 
what appeared to be her last earthly meal; Naaman, when bathing- 
in the Jordan for the cure of his leprosy; Simon the fisherman, 
when casting his nets in the lake of Galilee after a night of fruit¬ 
less toil;—these and very many other cases all tend to convince us- 
that, even from the lowest point of all—namely, the benefit result¬ 
ing to one’s self—the best and wisest course invariably is to obey 
immediately the suggestions of conscience, and to do what it dic¬ 
tates, may the consequences of so doing appear ever so futile or 
hazardous. 

Perhaps the most noteworthy incident inculcating this lesson,, 
is that of the three holy women who went on Easter morning to- 
anoint the dead body of Christ. 

Their sacred instincts and loving devotion impelled them to 
undertake this task; they started therefore on their mission, but 
on the way a difficulty, apparently insurmountable, suggested 
itself to them. A huge stone had been placed against the mouth 
of the tomb, and it would be utterly impossible for them to remove- 
it. “ And they said amongst themselves, Who shall roll us away 
the stone from the door of the sepulchre 1 ” (Mark xvi. 3). But, 
their sense of duty would not allow them to be .Referred by this 
obstacle. They would not meet trouble half-way; they would go- 
straight on and leave the issue in God’s hands. The consequence 
was that, at the very place and time when they expected to meet 


APPENDIX IT. 


433 


with the greatest difficulty, they found the difficulty had dis¬ 
appeared. “ And when they looked, they saw that the stone was 
rolled away.” And their faithful obedience to the voice of their 
conscience was rewarded by the announcement of the angel at the-, 
tomb, “ He is not here ; He is risen.” 

So will it always be if we implicitly follow the impulse sug¬ 
gested by the voice of God within us. The clouds which seem so 
black for us will melt away into golden light, and when we have 
passed through them, we shall look back in wonder that they had 
seemed to us beforehand so impenetrable. 

t 

NOTE J. 

ON LOVE. 

Chapter viii. page 133 

u When we reflect upon the bigotries, the hatred , the persecution, 
and the intolerance which have characterised all Churches that have 
taken as their chief corner-stone the teaching of Christ, which was 
pure love and nothing else, we can only account for the people 
who profess to be animated by this love , and who manifest it by a, 
hate which has provoked bloody wars, as having become insane 

It is important and instructive to note that one, and one only, 
test was given by Christ, by which His true Church was to be dis¬ 
tinguished. This test was no formula of doctrine, no dogma nor 
creed, no compliance with any form of ritual or worship, but plain, 
simple, practical love. He does not say, “ If you are to be my 
disciples, you must believe in the doctrine of justification by faith, 
or in that of the Trinity, or in the dogma of the infallibility of any 
person or body of persons, or in this, that, or the other shibboleth, 
theory, or whim, invented by human ingenuity or perverseness,— 
but, “ By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye 
have love one to another ” (John xiii. 35). 

Nor is this the teaching of one isolated passage,—it is the key¬ 
note of Christianity. It will be well, in order really to show that 
this is so, to gather together the most significant allusions, in the 
New Testament, to love, as the groundwork and test of Christ’s 
religion. Thus, in the first place, we have Christ’s own declara¬ 
tions on the subject, frequently and emphatically repeated. 

“ j say to you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do 
good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully 

2 E 


434 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


use you, and persecute you ; that ye may be the children of your 
Father which is in heaven ” (Matt. v. 44, 45). 

“ Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself ” (Matt. xix. 19). 

“ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with 
all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great 
commandment : and the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love 
thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all 
the law and the prophets ” (Matt. xxii. 37-40). See also Mark xii. 
30-31 ; Luke x. 27. 

“ A new commandment I give unto you. That ye love one an¬ 
other ; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By 
this shall all men know that ye *are my disciples, if ye have love, 
one to another” (John xiii. 34, 35). 

" This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have 
loved you ” (John xv. 12). 

“ These things I command you, that ye love one another ” 
(John xv. 17). 

“ Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom 
Thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are ” (John 
xvii. 11). 

“ That the love wherewith Thou hast loved me may be in them, 
and I in them ” (John xvii. 26). 

Thus the whole teaching of Christ was “ love,” pure and 
simple. How little even His immediate followers understood of 
the simplicity of this religion of their Master, may be gathered 
from the fact that in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, 
the subject of love, nay, the very word itself\ is not once to be 
found from the beginning to the end. Instead thereof, the book 
is a melancholy record of quarrels, disputes, and controversies, 
even amongst the apostles themselves, over matters of dogma, 
and other concerns of comparatively second-rate importance. 

St Paul, however, appears to have grasped somewhat of the 
overwhelming necessity of making this a subject of primary con¬ 
sideration, at any rate during the latter part of his ministry, when 
his proselytising zeal had been tempered by age and experience, and 
his heart opened to the love of Christ, by his self-sacrificing fidelity 
and nearness of touch to his Saviour. 

Thus the following, amongst others, are passages from his epis¬ 
tles, breathing the pure and Christian spirit of love. 

“ Let love be without dissimulation. Be kindly affectioned one 
to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another ” 
(Rom. xii. 9, 10). 

“ If there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended 
in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself ” 
(Rom. xiii. 9). 


APPENDIX II. 


435 


“ Love worketh no ill to his neighbour; therefore love is the 
fulfilling of the law” (Rom. xiii. 10). 

“ In all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, . . . 
in pureness, in knowledge, in long-suffering, in kindness, in a holy 
spirit, in love unfeigned ” (2 Cor. vi. 4-6). 

“ All law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love 
thy neighbour as thyself ” (Gal. v. 14). 

“ The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentle¬ 
ness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Gal. v. 22, 23). 

“ That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to 
comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and 
•depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth 
knowledge, that ye may be filled with all the fulness of God” 
<Eph. iii. 17-19). 

“Forbearing one another in love” (Eph. iv. 2). 

“Walk in love, as Christ also loved us” (Eph. v. 2). 

“ This I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in 
knowledge, and in all judgment ” (Philip, i. 9). 

“ Above all these things put on charity ( i.e ., love), which is the 
bond of perfectness” (Col. iii. 14). 

We have reserved till the end that most beautiful of all the 
Apostle Paul’s writings—namely, his picture of love, in the thir¬ 
teenth chapter of his First Epistle to the Corinthians. 

St James says: “ If ye fulfil the royal law according to the 
Scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, thou shalt do 
well ” (James ii. 8). 

“ Above all things,” says St Peter, “ have fervent charity among 
yourselves; for charity shall cover the multitude of sins (1 Peter 
iv. 8). 

And again : “ Add to your faith virtue; and to virtue know¬ 
ledge ; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; 
and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; 
and to brotherly kindness charity” (2 Peter i. 5-7). Thus placing 
•charity, or love, in the highest or most important place. 

But it is, after all, in the writing of St John, the disciple of love, 
that the sublime truth is most clearly stated. 

“ He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in 
•darkness even until now; he that loveth his brother abideth in 
the light ” (1 John ii. 9, 10). 

“ In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of 
the devil; whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither 
he that loveth not his brother. For this is the message that ye 
heard from the beginning, that we should love one another” 
(1 John iii. 10, 11). 

“ We know that we have passed from death unto life, because 


436 


SCIENTIFIC .RELIGION. 


we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in 
death” (1 John iii. 14). 

“ Let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in 
truth” (1 John iii. 18). 

“This is His commandment, that ye should believe on the name 
of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as He gave us com¬ 
mandment” (1 John iii. 23). 

“Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God: and 
every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He 
that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love” (1 John iv. 

7, 8). 

“ Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. 
If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is per¬ 
fected in us” (1 John iv. 11, 12). 

“ God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, 
and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may 
have boldness in the day of judgment: because as He is, so are we 
in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth 
out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made 
perfect in love. We love Him, because He first loved us. If a 
man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he 
that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love 
God whom he hath not seen ? And this commandment have we 
from Him, That he who loveth God love his brother also” 
(1 John iv. 16-21). 

It might, perhaps, be thought that we were fighting a shadow, 
in bringing so many texts of Scripture to bear upon what is 
acknowledged, “ in word and in tongue,” to be a fundamental law 
of Christianity, were it not for the lamentable fact that it is not 
also acknowledged to be so “ in deed and in truth.” 

There is not one single Church of Christendom at this moment, 
nor one single sect or party within any of these Churches, wherein 
the law of love is not wantonly violated, and the commandment of 
the Lord made of none effect, through the traditions of selfishness, 
intolerance, uncharitableness, narrow-minded bigotry, and fanatical 
superstition. Thus, like the dog in the fable, whilst intent on the 
shadow, they have lost the substance of Christ’s religion; and no¬ 
where now can be seen the marks of unity and brotherly affection 
which drew from the heathen of old the exclamation of wonder and 
respect, “ See how these Christians love one another!” 


APPENDIX II. 


437 


NOTE K. 

ON THE WORD “ POWER,” AS USED IN THE ENGLISH NEW 
TESTAMENT. 

Chapter x. page 161. 

“ This divine force is constantly alluded to in the New Testa¬ 
ment; but the word $vvap,i<s is usually rendered ‘ power ’ by the trans¬ 
lators, and its real meaning, which is 1 force ,’ is thus weakened .” 

The looseness and want of strict accuracy, in regard to certain 
words and expressions, by the English translators of the Bible, is 
really most astounding and inexcusable. 

This can scarcely be attributable to ignorance, nor would we 
ascribe it to wilful perversion; and it must therefore be set down 
either to carelessness about details, or, as is the most probable, to 
the blinding effects of preconceived theories and dogmatic prejudice. 

This remark applies, perhaps, more especially to those who were 
responsible for what is commonly known as the “Authorised Ver¬ 
sion ”; though the compilers of the “ Revised ” Edition are by no 
means free from the same charge. 

We shall deal further on with one evidence of this, in the treat¬ 
ment of the Greek word “ 7rv€v/xaf in its several applications.—See 
Note S, p. 463. We will here give another example, illustrative 
of our observations. 

The word “power” is to be found 145 times in the New Testa¬ 
ment (Authorised Version):— 

In seventy-six cases, as the translation of Bvva /xts; 

In fifty-six cases, as the translation of i£ovaria • 

In five cases, as the translation of Kparos; 

In one case each, as the translation of apXV> * L<r Xy$> /^yaXeior^?, 
and to Suvorov, respectively. 

In the remaining four instances—namely, Rev. vi. 4, xi. 3, xiii. 
15, xvi. 8—the word “power” is inserted in the English, with¬ 
out any corresponding word in the Greek, though the sense does 
not at all necessitate its insertion. 

In the Revised Version, it has been omitted in every instance, 
to the great improvement of the passages concerned. 

If, now, we examine the various Greek words which have been 
indiscriminately translated as “ power,” we shall find a very essen¬ 
tial difference in their respective significations. 

The import of “ Svvapu<sf as the word implies, is “dynamical 
po tver,” which is best rendered “ force,” or “ a force,” as the sense 
of the passage may require. 

That of “ i^ovcrlcL ” is “ vested power,” in the sense of “ author- 
ity or sway. 


438 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


That of “ xparos ” is “ physical power/’ best rendered “ strength/' 
That of “ apxv ” is simply “ magistracy.” 

That of “ Icrxvs ” is from “ is,” the same as the Latin “ vis,” and 
may therefore be rendered “ might.” 

That of “ /x,cyaA.aor^9 ” is, as the Revised Version correctly has 
it, “ majesty.” 

And “to Svvcltov” which is the neuter substantival form of the 
adjective SwaTos, “able,” is equivalent to the English word 
“ potency.” 

In many of the 141 passages in which these words occur, the 
meaning will be rendered much more simple and explicit if we 
read, instead of “ power,” the word corresponding to the Greek 
text, as given above; whilst in all the cases it will be well, for 
the sake of accuracy and distinction, that the reader should make 
the required substitution. 

For this purpose we now proceed to enumerate the different 
references, after which we will quote at length some of the pas¬ 
sages which are more importantly affected. 

1. Where “ power ” = “ Swa/us ” = “ force,” or “ a force ” : Matt, 
xxii. 29; xxiv. 29, 30; xxvi. 64. Mark ix. 1; xii. 24; xiii. 
25, 26; xiv. 62. Luke i. 17, 35; iv. 14, 36; v. 17; ix. 1; 
xxi. 26, 27 ; xxii. 69; xxiv. 49. Acts i. 8; iii. 12; iv. 7, 33; 

vi. 8; viii. 10; x. 38. Rom. i. 4, 16, 20; viii. 38; ix. 17 ; xv. 

13, 19; xvi. 25. 1 Cor. i. 18, 24; ii. 4, 5; iv. 19, 20; vi. 14; 

xv. 24, 43. 2 Cor. iv. 7 ; vi. 7 ; viii. 3 ; xii. 9; xiii. 4. Eph. i. 

19, 21; iii. 7, 20. Philip, iii. 10. Col. i. 11. 1 Thess. i. 5. 
2 Thess. i. 11; ii. 9. 2 Tim. i. 7, 8; iii. 5. Heb. i. 3; vi. 5 ; 

vii. 16. 1 Peter i. 5; iii. 22. 2 Peter i. 3, 16; ii. 11. Rev. 
iv. 11 ; v. 12; vii. 12; xi. 17 ; xii. 10; xiii. 2; xv. 8; xix. 1. 

2. Where “power” = l^ovcria = “authority,” or “sway”: Matt, 

ix. 6, 8; x. 1; xxviii. 18. Mark ii. 10; iii. 15. Luke iv. 6„ 
32; v. 24; x. 19; xii. 5, 11; xxii. 53. John i. 12; x. 18; 
xvii. 2; xix. 10, 11. Acts i. 7 ; v. 4; viii. 19; xxvi. 18. Rom. 
ix. 21 ; xiii. 1, 2. 1 Cor. vi. 12; vii. 4, 37; ix. 4, 12, 18; xi. 

10. 2 Cor. xiii. 10. Eph. ii. 2; iii. 10; vi. 12. Col. i. 13,. 

16; ii. 10, 15. 2 Thess. iii. 9. Tit. iii. 1. Jude 25. Rev. ii. 
26; vi. 8; ix. 3, 10; xiii. 4, 5, 7, 12; xiv. 18; xvi. 9; xvii. 
12; xviii. 1 ; xx. 6. 

3. Where “ power ” = “ Kpdros ”=“strength” : Eph. i. 19; vi. 

10. 1 Tim. vi. 16. Heb. ii. 14. Rev. v. 13. 

4. Where “ power ” = “ a-pxv ” = “ magistracy ” : Luke xx. 20. 

5. Where “ power ” = “ itrxvs ” = “ might ” : 2 Thess. i. 9. 

6. Where “power ” = “/AcyaXeum^ ” = “majesty ” : Luke ix. 43. 

7. W here “ power ” = “ro Svvarov ” = “ potency ” : Rom. ix. 22. 
We will now quote a few passages for the sake of illustrating 

the observations given above. 


APPENDIX II. 


439 


Matt, xxviii. 18:“ All sway in heaven and on earth has been 
given to me.” 

Luke i. 17 : “He shall proceed in his presence under Elijah’s 
pneuma and force.” 

Luke xx. 20: “ So that they might deliver him up to the 
magistracy and authority of the governor.” 

Luke xxiv. 49: “Remain in the city of Jerusalem, until ye 
shall be endued with a force from on high.” 

Acts i. 7, 8 : “ It is not for you to know times or seasons, 
which the Father hath settled of His own authority. But ye shall 
receive a force, when the holy pneuma has pome upon you.” 

Rom. xv. 18, 19: “Those things which Christ hath accom¬ 
plished through me, to make the Gentiles hearken, by word and 
deed, by means of a force of signs and wonders, a force of a holy 
pneuma.” 

1 Cor. i. 18 : “ The logos which is of the cross is to those who 
are being lost folly; but to us who are being saved it is a force of 
God.” 

1 Cor. ii. 4, 5 : “Hot in persuasive words of human wisdom, but 
in personal experience of pneuma and force; in order that your faith 
might not depend upon human wisdom, but upon divine force.” 

Eph. iii. 20: “ Who has a force to accomplish exceeding 

abundantly above all which we ask or imagine, according to the 
force which energises in us.” 

Philip, iii. 10 : “That I may know Him, and the force of His 
resurrection.” 

2 Tim. iii. 5 : “ Having an outward form of religion, but hav¬ 
ing rejected the force thereof.” 


NOTE L. 

ON THE PHYSICAL RELATION OF PRESENT PAIN TO FUTURE JOY. 

Chapter x. page 169. 

“ Every pain-atom, whether it be moral or physical pain, becomes 
a joy-atom when it has done its work of purification here, and passes 
upwards, like incense, to that bi'iglit atmosphere, where it condenses 
into a joy-atom, and forms a piece of substantial happiness, waiting 
to be entered into by the one who felt the agony of it on earth, and 
who, instead of rebelling then, cherished it as a priceless gift from 
God.” 

The natural and inseparable connection between pain-atoms, 
patiently endured and rightly utilised on earth, and joy-atoms in 


440 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


the bright hereafter, is a frequent theme in the Bible. But though 
most readers of the Bible understand and believe that sorrow here 
below is the prelude to joy hereafter above, few apparently com¬ 
prehend the truth that the one actually produces the other; that is 
to say, not that joy in heaven will be simply a reward for patient 
endurance of sorrow on earth, but that it is its offspring, the former 
being actually the same substance as the latter, as literally as the 
child is of the substance of the mother, or as the full-grown corn 
is of the substance of the seed. 

The following passages are a few of those which speak of the 
intimate relation between terrestrial sorrow and celestial joy; and 
some of them, to which we will afterwards draw especial attention, 
trace very clearly the substantial identity between the two. 

“ Our light affliction which is for the moment, worketh for us 
more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory; while we 
look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are 
not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal; but the 
things which are not seen are eternal ” (2 Cor. iv. 17, 18). 

“ Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if 
need be, ye have been put to grief in manifold temptations, that 
the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold that 
perisheth, though it is proved by fire, might be found unto praise 
and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 
Peter i. 6, 7). 

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, 
but the Avorld shall rejoice; and ye shall be sorrowful, but your 
sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman when she is in travail 
hath sorrow, because her hour is come; but when she is delivered 
of the child she remembereth no more the anguish, for the joy that 
a man is born into the world. And ye therefore now have sorrow; 
but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy 
no one taketh away from you” (John xvi. 20-22). 

" They that sow in tears shall reap in joy ” (Ps. cxxvi. 5). 

“ Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap ” (Gal. vi. 7). 

“He shall drink of the brook in the way; therefore shall he 
lift up the head” (Ps. cx. 7). 

“ They shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I 
lead them; I will cause them to walk by rivers of waters. And 
they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow 
together unto the goodness of the Lord, . . . and they shall not 
sorrow any more at all, ... for I will turn their mourning into 
joy, and will comfort them, and make them rejoice out of their 
sorrow” (Jer. xxxi. 9, 12, 13). 

“Count it all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into manifold 
temptations ” (James i. 2). 

“We behold Him, who hath been made a little lower than the 


APPENDIX II. 


441 


ang e ls, even Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with 
glory and honour; that by the grace of God He should taste 
death for every man. For it became Him, for whom are all 
things and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons 
to glory, to make the author of their salvation perfect through 
•sufferings” (Heb. ii. 9, 10). 

“ If so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified 
together” (Rom. viii. 17). 

“We know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in 
pain together until now. And not only so, but ourselves also, 
which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan 
within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption 
of our body” (Rom. viii. 22, 23). 

“Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy cometh in the 
morning” (Ps. xxx. 5). 

“Sorrow is turned into joy before Him ” (Job xli. 22). 

“ These are they which came out of great tribulation, and they 
washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 
Therefore are they before the throne of God” (Rev. vii. 14). 

Now from these passages we see four things:— 

1. That there is a necessary relation between present sorrow 
and future joy. 

2. That present sorrow produces future joy (2 Cor. iv. 17, 18; 
1 Pet. i. 6, 7 ; Ps. cx. 7; Heb. ii. 9, 10; Rom. viii. 17; Rev. vii. 
14). 

3. That present sorrow produces future joy, as a woman pro¬ 
duces a child (John xvi. 20-22; Rom. viii. 22, 23). 

4. As a seed sown produces the fruit which is reaped (Ps. 
cxxvi. 5 ; Gal. vi. 7). 

N.B. —In Ps. cxxvi. 5, it is worthy of remark that the words 
“They that sow in tears shall reap in joy,” do not mean that 
those who shed tears whilst in the act of sowing shall rejoice whilst 
in the act of reaping; but that those who sow in the substance of 
tears ( i.e ., sow tears) shall reap in the substance of joy (: i.e ., shall 
reap joy). 

From these considerations we see that the Bible teaches us 
that the joy of the hereafter is formed from the sorrow of the 
present; for sorrow and joy, like all other emotions, are in very 
truth material atomic substances. v 

The process by which the substance of the joy is produced out 
of the elements of the sorrow is analogous to the physical opera¬ 
tions with which we. are familiar in the science of chemistry. 

The atoms of pain are incapable of transformation into those of 
joy, except by combination with the moral atoms of patience and 
faith in the human sufferer. In many cases, sorrow and pain fail 
to produce the desired results; this is because they enter into com- 


442 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


bination with the wrong moral elements in the person afflicted- 
Then discontent, peevishness, and a murmuring spirit of faithless¬ 
ness mar the work which would otherwise ensue. 

When suffering and anguish are met by fortitude and patience, 
and these ingredients are together submitted to the action of the- 
divine crucible, then, and then only, do they “ work together for 
good,” as St Paul so beautifully describes it in Kom. viii. 28, 
where the Greek word exactly implies the action which takes place 
in a chemical retort. Then, and then only, does the refining fire- 
remove the dross from human nature; and the atoms of sorrow 
combine with the atoms of patience, producing the glorious, im¬ 
mortal, unalloyed substance of eternal happiness and joy. 


NOTE M. 

ON THE FUTURE LIFE. 

Chapter x. pages 176, 177. 

“ It is not possible for those who have passed through it into- 
higher conditions to sink back into it again , for the attraction of 
goodness , in the midst of which they dwell , is too powerful to ad¬ 
mit of their doing so ; but it is possible for those whp have sunk 
through it downwards to be drawn up to it again } and so fin¬ 
ally saved.” 

This is simply a matter of attraction and gravitation ; only the 
attraction and gravitation is of moral instead of physical atoms. A 
body escaping from earth into the upper regions of the unseen, 
world, comes within the gravitating influence of that region, and 
that attraction is powerful enough to resist all counter-gravitation. 
This was exactly the same case with the lower world till Christ 
went down there, and by His presence and the atomic elements 
which He deposited there, weakened the gravitation of the lower 
world to such an extent, that it is now possible for beings to escape 
from that region into the higher. This was the purpose of Christ’s 
“ descent into hell ” : “ He went to set free those who were bound,”' 
—bound, that is, by the force of infernal gravitation; He released 
the “ spirits in prison,”—in the prison, namely, of the attraction of 
the lower world, from which, till the power of that attraction was 
weakened by the counteracting element of Christ’s biunity, they 
were utterly unable to escape. 

This was what Christ meant by the description which He gives 
of the portions of the invisible world, in the parable of “ Dives and 
Lazarus.” We see there Lazarus “ carried by angels into Abraham’s 


APPENDIX II. 


44^ 


bosom,”—a figurative expression for the passing of his pneumatic 
body into the region of angels and departed saints; we see the rich 
man in the agony “ afar off,” in the lower regions of Hades. 

Between the two “ there is an impassable barrier ”; so that it is 
impossible for the denizens of the one locality to pay a visit to the 
denizens of the other. This “impassable barrier” is the moral 
expanse of earth, where the counter-attractions of heaven and hell, 
— i.e ., of the upper and lower invisible regions—meet; neither exer¬ 
cising within that region an attraction so irresistible as to nullify 
the gravitating force of the other. Outside that region, on either 
side, the condition of things becomes changed, and no attraction 
whatever from the lower world can reach the upper, just as, before 
Christ went down into the lower region, no attraction from the 
upper could penetrate into it. It was for this reason that Christ, 
before His death and descent into hell, described the rich man and 
Lazarus as being in positions so entirely asundered that it was im¬ 
possible for them to come again into contact. 

But that picture no longer holds true. Though Lazarus could 
now by no possibility descend to Dives, any more than he could 
before, yet it would now be possible for Dives to ascend to the 
position which. Lazarus occupied. 

In .this supremely potent work of Christ lies the hope, nay, the 
certainty, of the final salvation of the whole universe. Had Christ 
been content to humiliate Himself to death, and pass in His pneu¬ 
matic body into the invisible regions of earth, and thence upwards- 
into heaven, without descending into hell, there could never have 
been, for all eternity, any prospect of deliverance of the “spirits in 
prison.” 

How, however, as gradually, under the stronger attraction of the 
upper spheres, beings pass, one by one, from the lower, so does the 
celestial gravitation constantly increase, with the addition of each 
new moral force contained in the pneumatic body of each new¬ 
comer ; whilst at the same time the gravitating force of the inter¬ 
nals in proportion diminishes; and finally it must become alto¬ 
gether extinct, for all will have passed to the upper regions of bliss. 

This is the final salvation; this is the universal redemption of 
the invisible as well as the visible world, which it was Christ’s- 
great mission and work to accomplish. 

The “ impassable gulf ” has been a source of great controversy 
in the Church; and the erroneous conception of the unseen world,, 
based upon an ignorance of the fact that locality there is simply 
the result of the moral conditions which create it, has given rise to* 
such doctrines as purgatory, on the one hand, and eternal damna¬ 
tion, on the other, and has resulted in causing people to regard the 
moment of death as fixing for all eternity the condition of ther 


444 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


-soul. Once let the truth he realised that the place where people 
are in the unseen world, means simply the state in which they are, 
and all difficulties disappear which have given rise to so many 
-conflicting and erroneous dogmas. 


NOTE N. 

ON THE HIDDEN MEANING OF SCRIPTURE. 

Chapter xi. page 185. 

“ The fact that the Bible possesses this inner meaning is indicated- 
■both in the Old and New Testaments .” 

The frequent occurrence of such words as “ mystery,” “ parable,” 
“ dark sayings,” &c., testify to the fact that the Bible recognises 
-a hidden meaning in its records and teaching; which fact it is 
necessary to bear constantly in mind while perusing or studying its 
pages. Thus, amongst other statements on the subject in Holy 
Writ, we find the following:— 

“We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden 
wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory ” 
(1 Cor. ii. 7). 

“ According to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept 
secret since the world began, but now is made manifest, and by the 
-scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the 
•everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of 
faith” (Rom. xvi. 25, 26). 

“ Having made known to us the mystery of His will ” (Eph. i. 9). 

“ By revelation He made known to me the mystery, which in 
-other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it is now 
revealed unto His holy apostles and prophets by the pneuma ” 
(Eph. iii. 5). 

“ The mystery which has been hid from ages and generations, 
but is now made manifest to His saints; to whom God would 
make known what is the riches of the glory of the mystery among 
the Gentiles, which is Christ in you” (Col. i. 26, 27). 

“ Holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience ” 
(1 Tim. iii. 9). 

“ Stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor. iv. 1). 

“I will incline mine ear to a parable: I will open my dark 
sayings upon the harp ” (Ps. xlix. 4). 

“ I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings 
-of old ” (Ps. lxxviii. 2). 

“ The words of the wise and their dark sayings ” (Prov. i. 6). 


APPENDIX II. 


445 

“ Son of man, speak a parable unto the house of Israel ” 
(Ezek. xvii. 2). 

“ Utter a parable unto the rebellious house, and say unto them,. 
Thus saith the Lord God ” (Ezek. xxiv. 3). 

“ Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; 
and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people 
fat, and their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with 
their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their 
heart, and convert and be healed” (Isa. vi. 9, 10). 

“ They say of me, Doth he not speak parables ? ” (Ezek. xx. 49). 

“ I have declared the former things from the beginning; and 
they went out of my mouth, and I showed them; . . . I have 
even from the beginning declared it unto thee; . . . thou hast 
heard, see all this; and will not ye declare it 1 I have showed 
thee new things from this time, even hidden things, and thou didst 
not know them ; . . . yea, thou heardest not; yea, thou knewest. 
not; yea, from that time thine ear was not opened ” (Isa. xlviii. 3,. 
5, 6, 8). 

“ He revealeth the deep and secret things” (Dan. ii. 22). 

“ In all his epistles, speaking to them of these things; in which- 
are some things hard to be understood, which they that are un¬ 
learned and unstable wrest, as they do also the Scriptures, unto* 
their own destruction” (2 Pet. iii. 16). 

“ Now we see through & glass darkly ; but then face to face: 
now I know in part; but then I shall know even as I am known 
(1 Cor. xiii. 12). 


NOTE 0. 

ON SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES. 

Chapter xi. page 192. 

“I appeal to the testimony of others, because, thank God, the 
number of those who are physically as well as morally conscious of 
this increasing respiratory sensitiveness, is daily augmenting .” 

The notion of spiritual influences actually affecting the physical 
respiration may, perhaps, appear to many people fantastic; yet this- 
is a matter of constant experience to those who have entered on 
the sympneumatic life. The writer himself could scarcely have- 
credited the physical results produced by spiritual causes, if he had 
not actually experienced them frequently and powerfully himself,, 
and witnessed them in others. 

This respiratory motion is entirely distinct from cataleptic and 
hysteric convulsions; and yet at times it shakes the whole frame 


446 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


from head to foot with quivering, vibratory currents; whilst at 
■others it produces a sensation of intense difficulty of breathing, at 
times amounting almost to suffocation. 

On two separate occasions the writer has been able to detect the 
'exact position of an obscure malady in another person solely by 
the magnetic vibrations produced in his entire organism, as soon 
as his fingers have touched the seat of the disease. 

In one instance it was an affection of the kidneys; in another, 
a tension of the nerves at the base of the spine. 

In each case, the writer, passing his hand quietly and gradually 
down the back of the patient, and exercising at the same time all 
the powers of his will-force to surrender himself to the guidance 
•of the pneuma, has felt nothing until he has oome in contact with 
the spot overlying the source of the complaint. Immediately he 
has touched the place, he has felt a powerful current entering his 
organism, through the tips of the fingers, which were pressed upon 
the patient. This current has passed up his arm and through his 
whole frame, and at the same time the peculiar respiratory motion 
■spoken of has visibly taken possession of him. Directly his hand 
has been removed from the patient, the vibratory currents have 
oeased. This same phenomenon has occurred every time he has 
treated the patient thus, and in both cases the patient derived 
immediate and sensible benefit from every succession of the treat¬ 
ment ; being ultimately completely cured after a few days, notwith¬ 
standing the fact that, in the case of the affection of the kidneys, 
■a doctor who had been previously consulted by the patient declared 
that it was impossible for him to recover, except after an illness of 
long duration. 

The writer ‘ himself does not attempt to explain the facts ; he 
merely states them as they occurred, acknowledging, at the same 
time, that he was entirely unconscious of possessing in himself any 
healing faculty, and that he was throughout distinctly a passive 
instrument for the transmission of the vital currents. He can 
only account for the results by the unseen action of higher 
potencies. 

• The respiratory motion above described is probably analogous to 
that which affected Christ whilst curing the deaf and dumb patient 
in the district of Decapolis. St Mark, who relates the circum¬ 
stance, expressly mentions that Christ “ put His fingers into his 
ears,” and “ touched his tongue,” and “ looking up to heaven, He 
sighed .” That which was mistaken for “ sighing ” was doubtless 
the outward manifestation of the pneuma, imparting healing poten¬ 
cies through the organism of Christ; for the pneumatic respiration 
is generally accompanied by a heaving in the throat, best described 
as a succession of strong sighs. 

See Postscript, p. 472. 


APPENDIX II. 


447 


NOTE P. 


ON THE WORD “ SHAD DAI.” 


Chapter xvii. page 279. 


“ It is worthy of note that on the occasion of this covenant we, 
f or the first time, find the word ‘ Shaddai ’ used as a name for the 
Almighty,—a word of the deepest and holiest import, for in its in¬ 
ternal meaning it signifies the Divine Feminine.” 

One of the most remarkable words in the Hebrew Bible is the 
word *1^, Shad, with its various derivatives and cognate expres¬ 
sions. A clear understanding of their import will remove much 
that is obscure, and will throw a wonderful light on the hidden 
meaning of Scripture. 

It must be borne in mind that in the Hebrew language, as in all 
the oriental languages of antiquity, the forms of words have a 
deep signification, and that all words compounded of the same 
root-letters have a kindred meaning. 

Furthermore, inasmuch as vowel-points are a later addition to 
the language, and have nothing to do with root-formations, the 
vowels may be disregarded in tracing the ramifications of cognate 
words. 

The triliteral root from which Shad, comes, is m$, Shadah 
=“ to suckle.” 

Hence comes to mean “ the female breast ”; and the two¬ 
fold ideas of femininity and nourishment are introduced. 

Thus rw, Shiddah = a lady, a mistress, a wife, or a princess; 
m&, Slidah = a fountain; 



The fountain and the field are, as it were, the “ breasts ” of the 


-earth; for out of them are produced' the nourishment which 
“Mother Earth” affords to her children. 

From the idea of nourishment follows that of support or preser¬ 
vation. Hence that aspect of God which represents Him as the 
“Almighty Preserver” or “Nourisher of Life,” designates Him 
under the title of 'W, Shaddai, which is, consequently, invariably 
translated as “ the Almighty ” in the Bible. 

This rendering, however, gives but a very faint and unworthy 
idea of the real meaning of Shaddai. 

The name was first revealed to Abram, according to Sacred Writ 
(Gen. xvii. 1), and afterwards to Jacob (Gen. xxxv. 11), at a special 
period in the life of each of these patriarchs, and at the moment 


448 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


when they were solemnly informed that they and their seed were- 
to be the depositaries of the arcana of God’s mysterious truth. 

Hence it was in strict accordance with the gravity and mystery 
of this revelation, that the title under which the Deity was then 
revealed should be one of the holiest and most mystic import. 
Therefore it is that in this word *1 is contained nothing short of 
the hidden declaration of the eternal Divine Feminine. The “ V* 
the first letter of the sacred and mystic name “ ffliT* ”—commonly 
but erroneously pronounced Jehovah — designates the divinity;, 
the “ ” declares the femininity. 

But this great central truth, which mankind had lost, had to be- 
concealed from general understanding until the fulness of time for 
its revelation should come; and one curious result of this conceal¬ 
ment has been that the word *16?, though indicating the femininity 
of God, has been handed down to the Jewish nation as a masculine- 
Hebrew word. 

None the less, however, is it true that, wheresoever in the- 
Hebrew Bible the word occurs, it is, when rightly understood, 
to be applied to the Divine Feminine. 

The translators of the Bible, being ignorant of this hidden aspect 
of the Deity, have naturally overlooked this truth; and hence they 
only realised the import of “ Shaddai ” as “ the Almighty ” .Pre¬ 
server, when they ought in reality to have regarded it as “the- 
life-nourishing maternity of God.” 

The word '1^ occurs in the following passages in the Old Testa¬ 
ment, which we would earnestly recommend our readers to study 
carefully and separately, remembering that they should substitute- 
for “ the Almighty,” the words “ the Divine Feminine ” :— 

Gen. xvii. 1; xxviii. 3; xxxv. 11; xliii. 14; xlviii. 3; xlix. 
25. Exod. vi. 3. Num. xxiv. 4. Ruth i. 20, 21. Job v. 17;. 
vi. 4, 14; viii. 3, 5 ; xi. 7; xiii. 3; xv. 25; xxi. 15, 20; xxih 
3, 17, 23, 25, 26 ; xxiii. 16; xxiv. 1 ; xxvii. 2, 10, 11, 13; xxix. 
5 ; xxxi. 2, 35 ; xxxii. 8 ; xxxiii. 4 ; xxxiv. 10, 12 ; xxxv. 13;. 
xxxvii. 23 ; xl. 2. Ps. lxviii. 14; xci. 1. Isa. xiii. 6. Ezek. i.. 
24. Joel i. 15. 

Of these forty-six passages, it will be noticed that no fewer than 
thirty-one occur in the Book of Job, rightly considered by many 
as the most mysterious book in the Old Testament. Indeed, so 
long as the truth of the Divine Feminine remained concealed, it 
was impossible to understand the Book of Job; for, as we shall 
see presently, the connection between the two is so intimate that, 
the latter might be appropriately termed, “A Hymn to El Shaddai,. 
the Maternity of God.” 

Before entering upon this subject, however, it is necessary to 
consider some further modifications of the root m$y, Shadah. 

It is a well-known rule of Semitic philology that similar con- 


APPENDIX II. 


449 


sonants may be interchanged, one with another, this interchange 
effecting certain regular modulations in sense. Thus, sibilants may 
be interchanged with sibilants, dentals with dentals, gutturals with 
gutturals, and so forth. 

Now, in the case of ‘It?, we have a soft sibilant, b, sh, and a soft 
dental 1, d. 

Corresponding to t?, sh, we have two hard sibilants, b, and D, 
both equivalent to the English s. 

Corresponding to *1, d , we have also two hard dentals LD, and 
P, rendered by the English t, the latter being sometimes modified 
into n, th. 

These sibilants and dentals may be consequently interchanged 
with each other, the conversion of the soft consonant into the cor¬ 
responding hard having just this simple but important effect,—it 
inverts the sense, either partly or wholly, according as to whether 
one or both of the consonants is changed. 

Thus, whereas “ir, Shad, and its derivatives, composed of the 
soft sibilant and the soft dental, represent the true Divine feminine 
principle, the compounds of the corresponding hard sibilant and 
hard dental represent the false—that is, the entire inversion of the 
true; whilst the compounds of the hard sibilant with the soft 
dental represent a partial inversion, or a corruption of the original 
true principle. 

A remarkable illustration of this rule is afforded by the word 
mb, Shiddah, and its corresponding word neb, Sittah. 
j mb, Shiddah = a wife. 

( neb, Sittah =a wife who has become unfaithful. 

Again, 'Tb, Shaddai, represents the source from which man in 
his original perfect bisexual nature drew his nourishment, when he 
was after God’s own image, and was formed entirely of the material 

of God. 

'lb, Sadai, “ a field,” represents the source from which man 
in his fallen nature draws his nourishment, now that he is formed 
externally of the material of the earth. 

Since man has only partially lost the image of God, and only 
partially draws the nourishment for his organism from the “ breast 
of the earth,” only one of the original letters (b) is changed, the 
other (1) remaining the same. 

But though in the sacred shrine of mans inmost being there 
still lingers a spark of his original divine reflection, yet the con¬ 
sciousness of the feminine principle in the Deity became for the 
time entirely lost to mankind by the agency of the inverted male 
principle, as is described in Genesis under the story of the murder 
of Abel by Cain. Hence, when the first offspring of the new 
method of generation appeared, his name was called rib, Seth, to 
indicate the total inversion of the true principle, “ *lb, Shad.” 

2 F 


450 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


So, moreover, those beings of the lower invisible universe, who 
had assumed to themselves fictitious imitations of the qualities of 
the Godhead, and who belonged to the fallen portion of that former 
humanity who are entitled in the Bible “ sons of God ”—this term 
sometimes referring to the lower, though generally to the upper or 
unfallen, beings of the primal universe—are designated under the 
form of Siddim, this being simply the plural form of 

Sad , the partial inversion of the true Shad. 

These “ Siddim ” are the beings referred to in Gen. vi. 2, when 
we are told that “the sons of God saw the daughters of men 
that they were fair; and they took them wives of all that they 
chose.” 

This nefarious and unnatural sexual intercourse between the 
Siddim and the daughters of men resulted in a progeny which 
are called in the Bible “ Nephilim,” erroneously translated “ giants” 
in the Authorised Version of Gen. vi. 4, but correctly rendered in 
the Revised Edition. The word D^DJ, Nephilim , is the plural of 
Nephil , which signifies primarily, as the Authorised Version 
translates it in Job iii. 16, and Ps. lviii. 8, “ an untimely birth.” 
Hence it comes to mean “ an offspring born out of the ordinary 
course of nature,” such as the progeny of “ the sons of God ” and 
“the daughters of men.” These Nephilim were thus what we 
term “monstrosities,” or “monsters”; and hence, probably, the 
term “ giants.” It was doubtless the existence of these Nephilim 
upon the earth which gave rise to the ancient mythological legends 
of demi-gods, demi-mortals, centaurs, titans, satyrs, fauns, &c. 

The disastrous results of the illicit intercourse between the 
denizens of the fallen primal universe and those of this world, 
culminated in a tremendous social, moral, and physical cataclysm, 
which is represented in the Bible under the story of the Flood. 
It would appear that after this convulsion the intercourse between 
the two worlds was interrupted for a time; but after a while the 
Siddim, who in later times have been known under the names 
of “ Incubi ” and “ Succubi,” again infested the earth; and one 
region at least became the scene of the most abominable illicit 
traffic between them and human beings. The region thus infested, 
and in consequence visited by another cataclysm which utterly 
destroyed it, was called, from the practices of which it was the 
theatre, the “Vale of Siddim” (Gen. xiv. 8, 10); and the principal 
town in it, and the one most notorious for the criminal intercourse, 
was characterised by a name of identical import, and has ever since 
been a byword for the basest of unnatural crimes. This town 
was DID, Sodom. 

Captain Conder, R.E., in his ‘Handbook to the Bible,’ p. 240, 
remarks significantly, “ The name Siddim has always been a puzzle 
to scholars.” In the Kabbalah, however, this contact between the 



APPENDIX II. 


451 


Siddim and the world is mentioned. See Mather’s ‘ Kabbalah Un¬ 
veiled,’ page 249. 1 

One consequence has been that the particular sin of which the 
inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah were guilty has been entirely 
misunderstood; and if we bear in mind who these Siddim were, 
it is easy to understand the behaviour of the men of Sodom to¬ 
wards the two “angels” who visited Lot, as recorded in the 19th 
•chapter of Genesis. The crowning feature of their sin in this 
respect was due to the fact that these “ angels ” were denizens 
of the upper invisible primal universe, and the men of Sodom 
wished to treat them as if they had belonged to the lower. 

Such were the Siddim, fallen, degraded creatures, who assumed 
fictitious imitations of “ Shaddai ” ; though, at the same time, they 
•do not represent the absolute and total inversion, as is seen by the 
form of their name, in which only one of the two letters of 185* is 
•changed. 

The complete inversion, the diametrically antagonistic principle, 
is formed by changing both the letters into their corresponding 
hard sounds; and doing this we get set , the “ backslider,” or 
% the wicked one which, amplified, becomes Satan l Hence 
Satan signifies also “ adversary,” because the word represents the 
great antagonistic principle to Shaddai. 

The way has now been cleared to a comprehensive understand¬ 
ing of many of those very mysterious passages of Scripture, where 
Satan is prominently brought forward, especially in that book to 
which particular allusion has already been made above—that is to 
say, the Book of Job. 

Herein is described, in the mystic language of oriental poetry, 
the contest for the ascendancy over man between the true and the 
false principles, represented respectively by Shaddai and Satan. 

As Shaddai is the maternal giver and preserver of life, so Satan, 
the antagonist, is the destroyer. Hence through the agency of 
Satan, the cattle, the asses, the flocks, the camels, the servants, and 
the children of Job are destroyed; and Job himself is afflicted 
with suffering only just short of death. The patriarch is tempted 
to ascribe to Shaddai the action of Satan, and to impugn the true 
nature of God. 

The various phases through which the conflict passes occupy the 
greater part of the book, and are disguised under the form of 
.arguments and conversations with personal friends. 

The three friends of Job who, under the pretence of sympathy, 

1 Since the above was written, the writer has come across the following 
passage in M. Renan’s ‘ Histoire du Peuple d’lsrael,’ which affords a remark¬ 
able independent corroboration of his account of the Vale of Siddim: “Le 
nom de Siddim qu’aurait porte l’ancienne vallee est peut-etre une fausse pro¬ 
nunciation pour S^dim, ‘ la vallde des demons.’ ”—P. 116, Note 4. 


452 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


only aggravate his grief by their words, and who, with their pious 
hypocritical speeches, goad him on by their insinuations to rebel¬ 
lion against Shaddai, are really the emissaries of Satan in disguise, 
and represent the threefold weapons of Satan’s attacks—“ the lust 
of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life (see 1st 
John ii. 16). 

Eliphaz the Temanite represents “ riches, the pride of life,” the 
word “ Eliphaz ” signifying “ God of riches.” Bildad the Shuhite 
represents “ the lust of the flesh ”; “ Bildad ” being the same as 
“ Bel-shad,” or the “ Breast of Bel,” the false god of fleshly appe¬ 
tite. Zophar the Naamathite represents “the lust of the eyes”; 
the word “ Zophar,” with the appellation Naamathite, signifying to¬ 
gether “ sensual loveliness.” 

Thus we have here a poetical representation of a mode of attack 
made upon Job by Satan, exactly analogous to those which he 
made upon Eve and upon Christ. 

When Eve was tempted by Satan, the forbidden fruit was rep¬ 
resented to her under a threefold aspect, as “good for food,” 
“ pleasant to the eyes,” and “ a thing to be desired to make one 
wise ” : “ good for food,” the “ lust of the flesh ” ; “ pleasant to the 
eyes,” the “lust of the eyes”; “a thing to be desired to make one 
wise,” the “ pride of life.” 

When Christ was tempted by Satan, the same mode of attack 
was used: “ Command these stones that they be made bread,” the 
“ lust of the flesh ”: “ He showed Him all the kingdoms of the 
world and the glory of them,” the “ lust of the eyes ”; “ Cast 
Thyself down from the temple, for He shall give His angels charge 
over Thee,” &c., the “ pride of life.” 

The significance of this threefold method of attack by Satan lies 
in the fact that these are the very temptations specially directed 
against the true principles of Shaddai. 

The Divine Feminine is the giver and supporter of life and all 
its necessaries. From Shaddai, man in his first pure existence 
drew all his food, all his pleasure , all his satisfaction of life . 
From the same maternal divinity, man, in his regenerated condi¬ 
tion, will again draw the same essential supplies. 

All sin and all disease and misery arise from the fact that man 
has, through the agency of Satan, been seduced into drawing these 
supplies from an inverted source, and has thus fallen under the 
combined temptations of lust, covetousness, and pride, the “ lust of 
the flesh,” the “ lust of the eyes,” and “ the pride of life ”; choos¬ 
ing. as it were, for his companions and advisers Bildad, Zophar, 
and Eliphaz the Temanite. 

This is the hidden meaning of the Book of Job, before closing 
our notice of which, we must draw attention to the personality of 
“Elihu, the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the kindred of Bam.” 


APPENDIX II. 


453 


This mysterious personage, belonging to the family of Ram, —the 
most ancient world-reformer of whom history speaks, and certainly 
one of the most renowned, living probably more than eight thou¬ 
sand years ago,—comes upon the scene in the Book of Job as an 
impartial censor, alike of the patriarch himself, as of his three 
companions. His name “ Elihu,” is the same in import as “ Elijah,” 
and his mission is “ in the spirit of Elijah,” to prepare the way for 
the revelation of Shaddai. 

Hence we find the name “Shaddai” occurring.several times in 
the course of his speeches ; and even when it is not actually men¬ 
tioned, the whole of his observations bear manifest allusions to the 
sublime truth of the bisexual unity of God. 

So when the revelation came at length, when God addressed 
Job from out of the whirlwind, the patriarch was ready to recog¬ 
nise the revelation, and to humble himself in the presence of 
Shaddai. 

“ Jehovah answered Job, and said, Shall he that cavilleth con¬ 
tend with Shaddai 1 ? And Job answered Jehovah, and said, Be¬ 
hold, I am of small account; what shall I answer Thee 1 I lay 
my hand upon my mouth ” (Job xl. 2-4). 

Thus Job emerges safely from his trying ordeal; Satan is frus¬ 
trated, and Shaddai victorious ; the consequence being that “ the 
latter end of Job was blessed more than the beginning,” and 
through the fostering care of Shaddai he received children, servants, 
camels, oxen, asses, and flocks, far exceeding in numbers those 
whom he had originally lost. 

A glorious prophetic picture this of the final triumph of Shaddai 
over Satan for the possesion of humanity—a triumph which may 
still be undoubtedly f s distant, but which a multitude of signs, 
scarcely to be mistaLen, and a general concurrence of undefined 
anticipations, are leading many sober and- thoughtful minds— 
whether rightly or wrongly, none can tell—to regard as “ near, 
even at the doors.” 


NOTE Q. 

ON THE ATOMIC AFFINITY BETWEEN CHRIST AND TRUE 
CHRISTIANS. 

Chapter xviii. pages 305, 306. 

«* He needed to be born into the earth through a natural woman, 
and to die , and be lifted up from it, because He could only thus 
acquire an atomic construction ivhich would enable Him to come 
into close affinity with man , and so draw all men unto Him. There 
is no other being in that world, constituted as to His organic ele- 


454 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


merits with reference to ours as He is ; and hence He 'is our Saviour , 
to whom alone we must cling , and through whom alone we can draw 
the vital currents which will impart the potency necessary for the 
salvation of the race.” 

All Churches of Christendom profess to believe that “ union with 
Christ ” is a fundamental necessity for salvation. But in most 
cases this “union with Christ” is a vague and indefinite idea, con¬ 
sisting of a shadowy, unsubstantial attitude of the mind and intel¬ 
lect towards the Founder of the religion, which is called by its 
possessors “ faith.” This mental conception is, in reality, entirely 
different from true faith: and hence it exercises but very little, if 
any, influence upon their daily life. 

The “ union with Christ,” to be a means of salvation, must be 
an actual, tangible, concrete union ; in other words, it must be 
“ atomic.” 

This Christ Himself clearly indicated in the illustrations which 
He employed, when He wished to describe the relations which 
were to exist between Himself and those who were to be saved by 
Him. 

This is also to be found in more than one of the Pauline 
epistles. 

Two of the commonest illustrations will serve to explain this 
truth:— 

I. A tree. 

“ As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself,” said Christ, “ ex¬ 
cept it remain in the vine; so neither can ye, except ye remain 
in me.” 

“ I am the vine, ye are the branches. He that remaineth in 
me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit; for apart from 
me ye can do nothing” (John xv. 4, 5). 

It is to be noted in this passage that the Authorised Version 
has a very misleading phrase, when it says, “ without me ye can do 
nothing.” 

The expression “ without me ” is, in the Greek, x w P^ ipov > 
which means “ outside of me ”— i.e., “ cut off from me,” or, as the 
Revised Version puts it, “ apart from me.” 

Thus Christ meant to say that true life was inseparable from 
actual union with Him. 

How let us consider what constitutes a living tree. 

A tree is an organism. That is to say, a tree does not consist 
of a quantity of different pieces of wood, scattered about or heaped 
together, with a branch here and a bough there; but a tree has all 
its several parts organically connected together; and each part 
maintains its life and health by virtue of its being in organic 
union with the trunk and root. Thus, through this union, the 


APPENDIX II. 


455 


smallest leaf and the remotest bough draws from the root and stem 
the vital currents which impart the potency necessary for its life 
and vigour. So long as no organic obstacle occurs to check the 
flow of the vital current, the leaf, bough, branch, and every por¬ 
tion of the tree maintains its health. Directly the flow of the 
vital current becomes impeded from any cause, the limb affected 
loses its vigour and becomes diseased. Once severed from the 
main stock, the organic union is lost, and the limb can bring forth 
no fruit, and from that moment begins to die. 

The analogy between this organism and the organic union with 
Christ and those who are to he saved by Him, is very exact. 

Christ is the root and stem, and salvation for the human race 
consists in their being severally and individually brought into 
atomic union with Him, as is effected by the ingrafting of a hough 
upon a tree. This St Paul expresses when he says, “ If the root 
be holy, so are the branches. And if some of the branches be 
broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert grafted in 
among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of 
the olive tree; boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, 
thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. . . . For if thou 
wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert 
grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree; how much more 
shall they, which be the natural branches, be grafted into their own 
olive tree?” (Rom. xi. 16, 17, 18, 24.) 

From this analogy of a tree, we see two things of great import¬ 
ance :— 

1. Ho mere attitude of the mind to Jesus, such as feeling a 
conviction of His power and goodness, or such as commonly goes 
by the name of “ faith,” is sufficient to bring a person into saving 
union with Christ. Nor will any amount of personal excellence 
of character effect that object. There must be an actual atomic 
affinity. 

A bough may be admirably suited for bearing fruit, if grafted 
on to a certain tree, but it does not become a part of that tree, nor 
can it draw any vital current from the root of that tree, until it 
has been organically united to it by the process of ingrafting. It 
may actually be bearing fruit as the branch of another living tree, 
and the fruit may be apparently as good outwardly, but it will 
not be a fruit of “ the tree ” which has the particular root, until 
it has been grafted into atomic union with it. 

So it is with Christs salvation. Until a person has been 
brought into actual organic union with Christ, that person cannot 
draw his vital currents from Christ; or in other words, cannot be 
made a partaker of the “ holy pneuma ” which flows from Christ 
into the organism of those-who are thus in atomic affinity with 
Him. 


456 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


2. It is not necessary for this atomic union that there should be 
atomic contact. 

As we have seen, every particle of a living tree is in actual 
atomic union with the root, though not in actual atomic contact. 

A tree may be sixty feet high, for instance, and yet the topmost 
hough draws all its vital currents from the root as fully and truly 
as if it were in close proximity to it. 

So a human being can draw from Christ the full force of his 
necessary vital currents, but these currents may pass through 
many intermediaries between the act of issuing from Christ and 
the act of entering the human organism. 

The intermediaries no more separate Christ from the human 
being in atomic union with Him and them, than the main trunk 
and side branches separate the leaf from the root. Indeed, the 
leaf which is situated on the topmost bough could not live if 
actually in contact with the root, for it would have become dis¬ 
located from its proper sphere of existence. 

This important feature connected with the affinity between 
Christ and man will be even more clearly understood if we consider 
the second great illustration used in the Hew Testament. 

II. A body. 

“ As the body is one, and hath many members, and all the 
members of that one body, being many, are one body : so also is 
Christ” (1 Cor. xii. 12). 

“Ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular” (1 Cor. 
xii. 27), 

How it must be patent to every one that a body is a concrete 
organism. It does not consist of a head here, a couple of arms 
there, a couple of legs in another place, and so on; or of different 
limbs conglomerated together without any organic connection. 
Every portion of the body is in atomic union with the head, and 
draws the vital currents necessary for its life and strength from 
the head, by virtue of the spiritual essence which permeates the 
whole. Impede the healthy flow of this vital current, and the 
member affected becomes diseased. Sever a member from the body, 
and it is immediately dead. 

And as in the case of the tree, so of the body, atomic union 
does not imply atomic contact. The foot is in atomic union with 
the head, and the hand with the eye, and yet they are not in 
atomic contact. Moreover, each occupies its proper sphere, and 
draws its full vital current in proportion as it is content to keep 
its place and discharge its own functions. 

“ If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of 
the body; is it therefore not of the body 1 ... If the whole body 
were an eye, where were the hearing 1 If the whole body were 
hearing, where were the smelling 1 But now hath God set the 


APPENDIX II. 


457 


members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased Him. 
- . . And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of 
thee; nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you ” 
<1 Cor. xii. 15, 17, 18, 21). 

Thus organically united to Christ, as the branch to the vine, or 
as the limb to the body, and drawing all our vital force from the 
inpouring of the pneuma which flows forth from Christ as the 
pervading sap or the permeating spirit, we shall in time “ come 
into the unity of the faith, and the knowledge of the Son of God, 
unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness 
of Christ,” and “ grow up into Him in all things, which is the 
head, even Christ; from whom the whole body, fitly joined together 
and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to 
the effectual measure of the working of every part, maketh increase 
of the b^dy unto the edifying of itself in love” (Eph. iv. 13, 16) 


NOTE R. 

ON T11E DOGMA OF THE TRINITY. 

Chapter xx. page 326. 

“ The two dogmas of the Churches of Christendom that operate 
most powerfully against the descent of the Divine Feminine , which 
now seeks to impart its purifying and regenerating influence to the 
* Bride , the Lamb's wife,are the atonement , as popularly under - 
■stood, and the Trinity .” 

The doctrine of the Trinity has become so essentially funda¬ 
mental and integral a dogma of Christendom, that it will probably 
be a very difficult task to make people realise that it is, after all, a 
dogma purely of human invention, and one, moreover, of by no 
means the most ancient date of Christianity. Another difficulty 
in the way of dealing with the subject arises from the fact that, 
in consequence of the action of the ecclesiastical authorities for 
many centuries with regard to the dogma, and owing to the in¬ 
fluence of the anathemas in the Athanasian Creed, it is, in the 
minds of vast numbers of pious and well-meaning people, an act of 
sacrilegious profanation, even to discuss the merits of the doctrine 
at all. 

The objurgations of ecclesiastics, and the anathemas of creeds, 
will not, however, deter for a single moment the honest inquirer 
after the truth. The most hallowed sanctuary of the shrine of 
Christendom, the most cherished dogma of the popular faith, must 


458 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


be explored and examined on its own merits; and on its own 
merits it must stand or fall. 

In order to arrive at a just estimate as to the authority and 
validity of the doctrine of the Trinity, it will be necessary to take- 
a very brief survey of its history, and of the events which led to- 
its formal incorporation into the authorised dogmas of the religion 
of Christendom. In this we shall endeavour to observe the very 
strictest truth and impartiality, and without inclining either to tbe 
one side or to the other, to present the actual state of affairs to the 
reader, so far as it is possible to learn them from a careful study 
of the best authorities, at this distant period of time. 

Scarcely had the Church been set afloat by the apostles, before 
it began to be split up into parties and sects, each clinging to 
their own favourite modifications of thought and creed. These 
ultimately arranged themselves into what may be considered under 
three classes—(1) Judaising Christians, (2) Gnostic Christians, 
and (8) Platonic Christians. Of the two former, it will be 
sufficient here to observe, that Judaic Christianity may be said to 
have virtually terminated with the destruction of Jerusalem and 
the dispersion of the Jews; whilst Gnostic Christianity, after 
having maintained an active influence on the religion for the first 
four centuries, was suffered to die away, much to the detriment in 
many respects of true Christianity; for with its disappearance 
there passed away most of the arcana that contained the hidden 
meaning of the nature and work of Christ. 

Platonic Christianity arose and flourished principally in the 
Church of Alexandria. As Christianity spread over Egypt, it 
embraced amongst its converts many of the philosophers of the 
school of Plato, the headquarters of which were at that time at 
Alexandria. Thus the Christianity of the Church of Africa be¬ 
came impregnated with ideas and doctrines borrowed from two 
independent sources—the philosophy of Plato, and the immemorial 
traditions of Egyptian theology. The tendency of the Platonistic 
influence was to invent and discuss transcendental theories, based 
upon the teaching of the renowned Greek sage; arguments were 
constantly arising upon the relations between the Father and the 
Son. 

Meanwhile the essentially Egyptian notion of Trinities gradually 
incorporated itself into the metaphysical investigations of these 
Platonic Christians. For thousands of ages the Egyptian system 
of theology had represented the divine object of worship under 
varied personified attributes; and all these personified attributes 
were arranged in various trinities, in which the third member 
invariably “proceeded from the other two.” Thus from Amun 
and Maut proceeded Khonso, from Osiris and Isis proceeded 
Horus, from Neph and Sate proceeded Anouki,—and so on. 


APPENDIX II. 


459- 


During the third century of the Christian era, moreover, Plo¬ 
tinus, an Egyptian who had adopted the tenets of the Platonic- 
school, assiduously taught at Alexandria a Trinity in accordance 
with the Platonic idea. 

Prom this it will be seen how easily the notion of a Christian 
Trinity might be evolved by these Egyptian and Platonic adherents 
of the religion out of Christ’s injunction to His disciples—“ Go ye 
into all nations, baptising them into the name of the Father, and 
the Son, and the Holy Spirit,”—as well as from other passages in 
the Hew Testament. 

But in order that there should be no mistake as to Scriptural 
authority, a spurious verse was deliberately forged and inserted 
into the Epistle of St John, affirming, “There are three that bear- 
witness in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and 
these three are one.” 

The doctrine of the Christian Trinity, then, was thus first con¬ 
ceived and fostered in the Church of Alexandria, which had become 
the metropolis of the eastern portion of Christendom, as Pome was 
of the western. Whilst the Alexandrian Church was thus engaged 
in formulating dogmas, discussing theories, and wrangling over 
theological controversies, the Western Church was occupied in a. 
very different manner, and was struggling to acquire the temporal 
supremacy of the Roman world. Through innumerable trials, hin¬ 
drances, and persecutions, but aided, on the other hand, by a com¬ 
bination of circumstances which it would be out of the question to- 
discuss in a brief note like the present, the Christian organisation 
had gradually forced itself into a position of such importance that 
it was impossible for the Roman emperors to ignore it. By the 
close of the third century there was not a town or village in the- 
Roman empire, and scarcely a legion in the Roman army, in which 
Christian organisations did not exist. It was the danger threatened 
to the imperial system by this state of things that brought about 
the terrible Diocletian persecution at the beginning of the fourth 
century. This persecution only served to fan the flame of the 
religion, and to increase the power which the Christian organi¬ 
sation was so rapidly acquiring. The consequence was that, after 
the death of Diocletian, when the empire was divided into two 
portions, eastern and western, over which two rival aspirants to 
the imperial throne assumed command, the Christians practically 
held the balance of power in their hands. Licinius, who was 
reigning over the eastern portion, was not astute enough to grasp, 
this fact, and thinking to crush out the religion, he feebly 
attempted to revive the persecution of the Christians. But mean¬ 
while there arose above the political horizon a shrewd, uncom¬ 
promising, keen - sighted, but unscrupulous soldier, who wa& 
destined to exercise an overwhelming influence for evil as well 


460 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


-as good upon the whole condition of Christianity. He measured 
with consummate accuracy the proportions of the Christian strength 
•of the empire; and he saw that if he allied himself to the Christian 
party, he would probably be able to establish himself firmly, and 
without a rival, upon the throne of the whole Roman empire. He 
therefore determined openly to proclaim himself on the side of the 
•Christians. He announced that he had been favoured with a 
miraculous vision; and marshalling his army under the banner 
•of the cross, he advanced to the conquest of the empire. The 
events of war crowned his enterprise with success; he became 
established on the imperial throne as the first Christian Roman 
emperor, and his name has been handed down to posterity as 
that of Constantine the Great. Having completely routed his 
rival, he transferred the seat of empire to Byzantium, and called 
the city, after himself, by the name of Constantinople. The 
•ecclesiastical historians have thrown a glamour of sanctity over the 
memory of Constantine ; but the verdict of the impartial biographer 
is by no means of a favourable nature. His profession of Christi- 
•anity was entirely dictated by motives of personal ambition; and 
though he was obliged to be true outwardly to those who had 
placed him in power, and who maintained him on his throne, he 
never conformed to the ceremonial rites of the Church until the 
■close of a life characterised by much firmness, bravery, and fore¬ 
sight, but stained by acts of diabolical cruelty and murder, and by 
•effeminate self-indulgence. 

We have dwelt somewhat at length upon the career of Constan¬ 
tine, for to him the Church is mainly indebted for the Nicene 
Creed, and for the incorporation of the dogma of the Trinity into 
its authorised Articles of Faith. 

Soon after he had become established upon the throne, a tempest 
broke out amongst his Christian subjects and supporters, which 
threatened to jeopardise his imperial position. The bishopric of 
Alexandria had become vacant, and there were two rival aspirants 
to the see. One was named Arius, the other Alexander. Both 
had a considerable number of supporters, but Alexander was ap¬ 
pointed bishop. Thereupon he was vehemently accused of heresy 
by the partisans of Arius, and the latter in return was visited 
by an anathema. The points in dispute hinged upon the different 
philosophical aspects regarding the position of the Son in the new 
Trinitarian doctrine, which, as we have seen, had come to the front 
in the Church of Alexandria. From a theological controversy the 
-quarrel threatened to assume the proportions of a political disturb¬ 
ance, and Constantine felt it imperatively necessary to interfere, 
-and to put an end to the tumult. He therefore, having first ascer¬ 
tained the relative strength of the two parties in the Christian 
"Church, determined to put down the weaker side, which consisted 


APPENDIX II. 


461 


of the adherents of Arius ; and having himself decreed beforehand 
how everything ivas to be settled , he called together a general council 
of the Christian Church. This is the true historical account of the 
origin of the “ Council of Nice,” which was so called because it 
was held at the town of Nicsea, in Asia Minor. At this Council, 
held 325 a.d., the doctrine of the Trinity was first authoritatively 
put forward as a dogma of the Church, and the creed issued which 
has ever since been known by the name of the “ Nicene Creed.^ 
The emperor enforced the decision of the Council by civil authority; 
he caused letters to be issued denouncing Arius, and threatening 
his followers with death. 

Thus we see that for more than three hundred years the doctrine- 
of the Trinity was unheard of as a necessary article of faith. The 
apostles and their followers had no conception of such a dogma y 
and in all probability it would have entirely died away, like many 
other theories and doctrines which were broached, fought over, and 
abandoned during those earlier centuries of Christendom, if it had 
not been for the decisive action taken by the pseudo-Christian 
Roman emperor, Constantine. 

Such being the case, the dogma can by no possibility be regarded 
as having a divinely inspired origin; and we are therefore free to 
discuss it as unreservedly as any other theory or idea that has- 
ever been put forth by man in any age, or in any religion of the 

world. 

So regarded, the doctrine must fall to the ground at once, for it 
is based on an utter absence of common-sense. The very attempts 
which have been made to explain it have only served to reveal 
more clearly how utterly opposed to reason it is : and the climax 
of metaphysical nonsense was reached in the composition of the 
Athanasian Creed, which itself was not written, according to the 
latest modern authorities, till some three hundred years after the 
death of Athanasius, and was fraudulently palmed upon that great 
champion of Trinitarian ism in order to invest it with the greater 
authority. It is not too much to say that scarcely a single fol¬ 
lower of Christianity, lay or clerical, would venture in the present 
day to acknowledge his adhesion to that marvellous document, 
or would attempt to uphold the dogma of the Trinity, if it were 
not for the almost universal idea, founded as we have seen upon 
absolutely false premisses, that the doctrine itself, as well as the 
creed which endeavours to enunciate it, have a divinely inspired 
authority. 

^ It is only fair that we should, before we close this note, state 
the principal passages of Scripture which are relied on by the 
Church in support of the doctrine. 

We have already mentioned the baptismal form, “ In the name 
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit ” (Matt. 


462 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


.xxviii. 19) ; and, as has been shown by Mr Oliphant, this clearly 
indicates God, humanity, and the uniting pneuma. 

The passages out of St John’s Gospel (14th, 15th, and 16th 
■chapters) have also been fully treated of in the body of the hook; 
•and we will here merely remark that the Greek word 7rapaK\yTos 
has been quite erroneously translated “ comforter,” meaning literally 
^ one called in to another’s aid,” and best rendered by the word 
“ helper.” 

The doctrine of the Trinity is generally supposed to be indicated 
in the wording of St Paul’s benediction to the Corinthians: “ The 
;grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the com¬ 
munion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all ” (2 Cor. xiii. 14). 

But here, again, the words have been adapted to the doctrine, 
mot the doctrine asserted by the words, which are best translated 
thus: “The saving influence of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the 
love of God, and the common sharing of the holy pneuma, be with 
you all.” 

It was the most natural thing in the world for St Paul to pray 
that his disciples and friends might experience the saving influence 
■of Christ, the love of God, and the sharing of the pneuma, these 
three things being all essentially hound up with human salvation ; 
•and yet they by no means necessarily imply the dogma of the 
Trinity. 

Another text often quoted in support of the doctrine is “ Holy, 
holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to 
'Come ” (Rev. iv. 8). 

The word “ Almighty ” is the Greek 7ravro/cparcop } which is taken 
from the Septuagint, where it is erroneously employed as a trans¬ 
lation of V? I5^, Shaddai (see e.g. Job xxii. 17, 25; xxxii. 8; 
-xxxiii. 4, &c., &c., in the Septuagint). 

“Lord” is “ Jehovah,” Hin , the import of which word is “ male 
•and female, two-in-one.” 

“ God ” is “ El ” (male principle of the Deity). 

Hence the tersanctus, “ Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty,” 
is really “ Holy, holy, holy, Jehovah El Shaddai”; that is, “ Holy 
•Jehovah, holy El, holy Shaddai”; or “Holy is God, in His 
divine biunity ; holy is God, in His divine masculinity; holy is 
■God, in His divine femininity.” 

These are really the only passages which even appear to favour 
the doctrine of the Trinity; and we have shown how consistent 
they are with entirely different constructions. 

On the other hand, if the dogma had been true, it would have 
been one of such vital and fundamental importance, that Scriptural 
writers like, for instance, St Paul and St John, if they had known 
•and believed in it, could hardly have failed to have stated and ex¬ 
pounded it, in language that could not be misunderstood. 


APPENDIX II. 


463 


But as we have already pointed out, the doctrine was not in¬ 
vented until long after their decease. 

The sooner Christendom realises its fallacy, and expunges it from 
her creeds, the better for herself and for the cause of truth. 


NOTE S. 

ON THE WORD “ PNEUMA.” 

Chapter xx. page 327. 

“ There is no possible excuse for the word m/evn.a being sometimes 
translated ‘spirit’ sometimes ‘wind' and sometimes ‘ghost.’” 

The word 7rvev//,a, "** pneuma,” occurs in the Greek Testament 
305 times. 

1. In 90 passages alone without definite article or qualifying 
■epithet; when it means simply “ pneuma,” or “ a pneuma.” 

2. In 49 passages without definite article, but with the quali¬ 
fying epithet ayiov, “ hagion ”; when it means “ holy pneuma,” 
or “ a holy pneuma.” 

3. In 127 passages with definite article, but without qualify¬ 
ing epithet; when it means “ the pneuma,” or “ my,” “ his,” “ her,” 
•&c., “ pneuma,” as the context requires. 

4. In 12 passages with both the definite article and qualifying 
•epithet ayiov; when it means “ the holy pneuma.” 

5. In 27 passages, in the more emphatic form, to m/cv/xa to 
■ ayiov ; when it means “ the pneuma which is holy.” 

As it is very important to distinguish, between these various 
eases, we earnestly recommend the reader to examine in his 
English Bible each separate passage, and to note accordingly. 
For this purpose we will give the different passages under their 
several headings. 

1. “Pneuma,” or “a pneuma”: Matt. x. 1; xii. 28; xxii. 43. 
Mark i. 23; iii. 30; v. 2 ; vii. 25; ix. 17. Luke i. 17, 80; ii. 
40; iv. 18; ix. 55; xi. 26; xiii. 11; xxiv. 37, 39. John iii. 5, 
6; iv. 23, 24. Acts v. 16; viii. 7 ; xvi. 16; xxiii. 8, 9. Rom. 
i. 4 ; ii. 29 ; vii. 6 ; viii. 1, 9, 14, 15 ; xi. 8. 1 Cor. ii. 4, 13 ; 

v. 3 ; vi. 17 ; vii. 34, 40 ; xii. 3, 13; xiv. 2, 32 ; xv. 45. 2 Cor. 

iii. 3, 6 ; vii. 1 ; xi. 4. Gal. iii. 3 ; iv. 29 ; v. 5, 16, 18, 25 ; 

vi. 1. Eph. ii. 18, 22 ; iv. 4 ; v. 18; vi. 18. Philip, i. 27 ; ii. 1 ; 

iii. 3. Col. i. 8. 2 Thess. ii. 2, 13. 1 Tim. iii. 16. 2 Tim. i. 7. 

Heb. i. 14 ; iv. 12 ; ix. 14 ; xii. 23. James ii. 26. 1 Peter i. 2 ; 
iii. 4, 18; iv. 6. 1 John iv. 1, 2, 3. Jude 19. Rev. i. 10; iv. 

2; xi. 11 ; xvi. 13, 14; xvii. 3; xviii. 2; xxi. 10. 


464 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


2. “Holy pneuma,” or “a holy pneuma”: Matt. i. 18, 20; 

iii. 11. Mark i. 8; xii. 36. Luke i. 15, 35, 41, 67; ii. 25; 
iii. 16; iv. 1; xi. 13. John i. 33; vii. 39; xx. 22. Acts i. 2, 

5; ii. 4; iv. 8; vi. 3, 5 ; vii. 55; viii. 15, 17, 19; ix. 17; x^ 

38; xi. 16, 24; xiii. 9, 52; xix. 2. Rom. v. 5 ; ix. 1 ; xiv. 17 
xv. 13. 1 Cor. xii. 3. 2 Cor. vi. 6. Eph. iii. 5. 1 Thess. i. 

6.‘ 2 Tim. i. 14. Titus iii. 5. Heb. ii. 4; vi. 4. 1 Peter i. 12.. 
2 Peter i. 21. Jude 20. 

3. “ The pneuma,” “ my pneuma,” “ his pneuma,” &c.: 

Matt. iii. 16; iv. 1; v. 3 ; viii. 16; xii. 18, 31; xxvi. 41.. 

Mark i. 10, 12, 27 ; iii. 11 ; v. 8, 13; vi. 7 ; viii. 12 ; ix. 20, 25.. 

Luke i. 47 ; ii. 27; iv. 14, 36; viii. 29, 55; ix. 42 ; x. 20, 21 ; 

xi. 24; xxiii. 46. John i. 32 ; iii. 6, 34 ; vi. 63; vii. 39; xi. 
33; xiii. 21 ; xiv. 17; xv. 26; xvi. 13. Acts vi. 10; vii. 59;- 
viii. 29 ; x. 19 ; xi. 12, 28; xvi. 7 ; xvii. 16 ; xviii. 25; xx. 22; 

xxi. 4. Rom. i. 9; viii. 2, 4, 10, 11, 16, 23, 26, 27 ; xii. 11 

xv. 30. 1 Cor. ii. 10, 11, 12, 14; iii. 16; v. 3, 4, 5; vi. 11, 20; 

xii. 4, 8, 10; xiv. 14, 15, 16; xvi. 18. 2 Cor. i. 22; ii. 13;. 

iii. 8, 17 ; iv. 13; v. 5; vii. 13; xii. 18. Gal. iii. 2, 5, 14; iv. 

6; v. 17, 22; vi. 8, 18. Eph. ii. 2; iii. 16; iv. 3, 23 ; vi. 17. 

Philip, i. 19. Col. ii. 5. 1 Thess. v. 19, 23. 2 Thess. ii. 8. 

1 Tim. iv. 1. 2 Tim. iv. 22. Philem. 25. Heb. xii. 9. James- 

iv. 5. 1 Peter i. 11 ; iii. 19 ; iv. 14. 1 John iii. 24 ; iv. 1, 2, 6 ; 

v. 6, 8. Rev. ii. 7, 11, 17, 29; iii. 6, 13, 22; xiv. 13; xix. 10;-. 

xxii. 17. 

4. “ The holy pneuma ”: Matt, xxviii. 19. Luke xii. 10, 12. 

Acts i. 8; ii. 33, 38; ix. 31; x. 45; xv. 28; xvi. 6. 1 Cor. vi.. 

19. 2 Cor. xiii. 14. 

5. “The pneuma which is holy”: Matt. xii. 32. Mark iii. 

29; xiii. 11. Luke ii. 26; iii. 22. Acts i. 16; v. 3, 32; vii. 

51; viii. 18; x. 47 ; xi. 15; xiii. 2, 4; xv. 8; xix. 6; xx. 23,. 

28 : xxi. 11; xxviii. 25. Eph. i. 13; iv. 30. 1 Thess. iv. 8. 

Heb. iii. 7 ; ix. 8; x. 15. 

How a considerable amount of confusion and vagueness has 
arisen in many of the above-named passages for want of a clear 
understanding of the meanings of the word Trvev/xa, “ pneuma,” as 
applicable to each individual passage. 

This confusion has been vastly intensified by the unwarrantable 
use which the English translators and divines have made of the- 
term “ Holy Ghost.” The word “ Ghost,” indeed, in its biblical 
sense, has become so inextricably interwoven with a dogma, and is 
so unnecessarily interpolated in the place of “ pneuma ” or “ spirit,”' 
for the purpose of supporting that dogma, that it would be impos¬ 
sible to exhibit with sufficient clearness the original meaning of 
the different passages, if we continued to use that term. We* 


APPENDIX II. 


465 


therefore recommend our readers, once and for ever, to expunge 
from their vocabulary the expression “ Holy Ghost.” 

The pneuma spoken of in the New Testament invariably signifies 
either the divine source from which all life, inspiration, and con¬ 
sciousness of sympneumatic influx originally proceeds, or else the 
emanation which proceeds, or has proceeded, from that divine 
source. 

In other words, it signifies either (1) the Divine Feminine itself; 
(2) those created beings who have originally emanated from the 
Divine Feminine; or (3) the influence which proceeds from the 
Divine Feminine, and infuses itself into those created beings. 

Now these created beings may be classified under four heads: 
(1) the bisexual beings of the primal universe; (2) the beings of 
the upper invisible portion of our own universe; (3) the beings of 
the lower invisible portion of our universe; (4) the inner and most 
sacred portion of man’s own nature, commonly called his “ spirit.” 

We may therefore divide the signification of the New Testament 
7rv€v/xa into the following six classes :— 

1. The Divine Feminine. 

2. A bisexual sympneumatic being of the primal universe. 

3. A being of the upper invisible portion of our present 
universe. 

4. A being of the lower invisible portion. 

5. The pneuma or spirit of a human being in the visible world. 

6. The influence, or afflatus, which is infused into man’s inner 
consciousness from a higher external source, and which is commonly 
called “ inspiration ” or “ influx.” 

We say “from a higher external source,” because, although this 
sympneumatic inspiration or influx proceeds, in the first instance, 
from the Deity, it descends through Christ to man’s inner con¬ 
sciousness by the channels of intervening grades of created beings, 
from the highest rank of sympneumatic creatures of the primal 
universe, down to the invisible spirits of our upper spheres who 
immediately touch the inner pneuma of man. 

It being our desire to make this most important subject 
thoroughly clear to our readers, we will once again take the 305 
passages above quoted, and subdivide them into the six classes, 
named according to the signification to be attached to nvev/xa in 
each case. 

I. Where 7n/€v//.a refers to the Divine Feminine: Matt. iii. 16; 
xii. 18, 31, 32; xxviii. 19. Mark i. 10; iii. 29; xiii. 11. 
Luke iii. 22; xii. 10, 12. John i. 33; iii. 6, 8, 34; iv. 24; vii. 
39 ; xiv. 17 ; xv. 26 ; xvi. 13. Acts i. 8, 16 ; ii. 33, 38 ; v. 3, 32 ; 
vii. 51; ix. 31; x. 38, 45, 47; xv. 8, 28; xx. 28. Rom. viii. 
2, 11, 16, 23; xv. 30. 1 Cor. ii. 11, 13, 14; iii. 16; xii. 4. 

2 G 


466 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


2 Cor. i. 22; iii. 17; v. 5. Gal. iii. 14; v. 22. Eph. i. 13; 
iv. 30 ; vi. 17. Philip, iii. 3. 1 Thess. iv. 8. Heb. x. 15. Jas. iv. 
5. 1 John v. 6. Rev. xxii. 17. 

II. Where Trvevfxa refers to a bisexual sympneumatic being of the 
primal universe, the denizens of which are known under various 
names, such as angels, archangels, seraphim, spirits, &c.: Matt. i. 
18, 20. Luke i. 15, 17, 35. Rom. i. 4; viii. 26. Gal. iv. 29. 
Heb. i. 14; xii. 9. 

III. Where 7rvev/xa refers to a being of the upper invisible por¬ 
tion of our universe: Luke xxiv. 37, 39. Acts xxiii. 8, 9. Heb. 
i. 14; xii. 9, 23. 

IY. Where Trvevfxa refers to a being of the lower invisible por¬ 
tion of our universe: Matt. viii. 16; x. 1. Mark i. 23, 27 ; iii. 

11, 30; v. 2, 8, 13; vi. 7 ; vii. 25; ix. 17, 20, 25. Luke iv. 

36; viii. 29; ix. 42; x. 20; xi. 24, 26; xiii. 11. Acts v. 16; 

viii. 7 ; xvi. 16. Eph. ii. 2. 1 Peter iii. 19. Rev. xvi. 13, 14; 

xviii. 2. 

Y. Where 7rvev/xa refers to the inner spirit of a human being 
living on the visible earth: Matt. v. 3 ; xxvi. 41. Mark viii. 12. 
Luke i. 47, 80 ; ii. 40 ; viii. 55 ; x. 21 ; xxiii. 46. John iv. 23, 24 ; 

vi. 63; xi. 33; xiii. 21. Acts vii. 59; xvii. 16; xviii. 25. 

Rom. i. 9; vii. 6; viii. 10, 11, 13, 16; xii. 11. 1 Cor. ii. 11, 

13, 14; v. 3, 4, 5; vi. 17, 20; vii. 34; xiv. 2, 14, 15, 16; xv. 

45; xvi. 18. 2 Cor. ii. 13; iv. 13; vii. 1, 13. Gal. v. 5, 16, 

17, 22; vi. 1, 8, 18. Eph. ii. 22; iv. 3, 4, 23; vi. 18. Philip. 

i. 27 ; iii. 3. Col. i. 8; ii. 5. 1 Thess. v. 23. 2 Thess. ii. 2, 13. 

1 Tim. iii. 16. 2 Tim. iv. 22. Philem. 25. Heb. iv. 12; xii. 9. 

James ii. 26. 1 Peter iii. 4, 18; iv. 6. Jude 19, 20. 

YI. Where th/cv/ao, refers to the influx, or afflatus, infused into 
man’s inner consciousness from a higher external source, and which 
always partakes of the Divine Feminine character: Matt. iii. 11; 
iv. 1; xii. 28; xxii. 43. Mark i. 8, 12; xii. 36. Luke i. 41, 
67; ii. 25, 26, 27; iii. 16; iv. 1, 14, 18; ix. 55; xi. 13. John 

iii. 5. 6 ; vi. 63 ; xx. 22. Acts i. 2, 5 ; ii. 4 ; iv. 8 ; vi. 3, 5, 10 ; 

vii. 55; viii. 15, 17, 18, 19, 29 ; ix. 17 ; x. 19 ; xi. 12, 15, 16, 24, 

28 ; xiii. 2, 4, 9, 52 ; xvi. 6, 7 ; xix. 2, 6 ; xx. 22, 23 ; xxi. 4, 11; 

xxviii. 25. Rom. ii. 29 ; v. 5 ; viii. 4, 5, 9, 14, 15; ix. 1 ; xi. 8; 

xiv. 17; xv. 13. 1 Cor. ii. 4, 10, 12; vi. 11, 19; vii. 40; xii. 

3, 7, 8, 10, 13; xiv. 1, 32. 2 Cor. iii. 3, 6, 8; iv. 13; xi. 4; 
xiii. 14. Gal. iii. 2, 3, 5; iv. 6; v. 18,25. Eph. ii. 18; iii. 5, 
16 ; v. 18. Philip, i. 19; ii. 1. 1 Thess. i. 5, 6; v. 19. 2 Thess. 

ii. 8. 1 Tim. iv. 1. 2 Tim. i. 7, 14. Titus iii. 5. Heb. ii. 4; iii. 
7; vi. 4; ix. 8, 14. 1 Peter i. 2, 11, 12; iv. 14. 2 Peter i. 
21. 1 John iii. 24; iv. 1, 2, 3. Rev. i. 10; ii. 7, 11, 17, 
29; iii. 6, 13, 22; iv. 2; xi. 11; xiv. 13; xvii. 3; xix. 10; 
xxi. 10. 


APPENDIX II. 


467 


This note would not be complete without some extracts in extenso 
from the New Testament, where the passages have become espe¬ 
cially obscured, owing to an incorrect rendering of the original into 
English. 

We will therefore ask the reader to pay particular attention to 
the following passages, which we have endeavoured to render with 
strict accuracy. They should be compared with the Authorised 
Version, as well as with the Revised, for the sake of a clear appre¬ 
hension of their true meaning as distinguished from that which 
dogma has assigned to them. 

Matt. xii. 28: “If I cast out the demons by a divine influx, 
then the kingdom of God has overtaken you.” 

Luke i. 35 : “A holy pneuma shall come upon thee, and a force 
of a very high being shall overshadow thee; wherefore also the 
offspring, being holy, shall be called a son of God.” 

Luke ii. 25 : “And a divine influx was upon him; and it had 
been revealed to him by the divine influx, that he should not see 
death, before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And he came under 
the influx into the temple.” 

Luke ix. 54, 55 : “ And when His disciples James and John saw 
this, they said, Lord, wilt Thou that we command fire to come down 
from heaven and consume them, as Elijah did 1 But He turned, 
and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not under what kind of an 
influx ye are.” 

The meaning of Christ here was, that the influx which prompted 
the suggestion of His two disciples was of an infernal nature, 
instead of being, as they imagined, from a high and holy source. 

Lukexi. 13 : “How much more shall your heavenly Father give 
a divine influx to them that seek Him ? ” 

John iii. 5-8 : “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Unless a man has 
been born of water and pneuma, he cannot enter into the kingdom 
of God. That which has been born of the flesh is flesh; and that 
which has been born of the pneuma is pneuma. Do not be sur¬ 
prised, that I said to you, You must be born from above. The 
pneuma operates wherever it wills; and you hear its voice, but do 
not know whence it comes, and whither it leads; thus is every one 
who has been born of the pneuma.” 

This very important passage has been entirely misunderstood, 
and grave errors of doctrine have been founded upon it, owing to 
several gross inaccuracies in the Authorised Translation. 

In the first place, avuOtv, as every Greek scholar knows, simply 
means “ from above”— i.e., from a higher source; and it is pal¬ 
pably erroneous to translate it “ again.” Thus “ you must be 
born again,” is really “ you must be born from above.” 

Secondly, the word translated “ Spirit ” in one place, “ spirit ” 
in another, and “ wind ” in another, is all one word ; and that one 


468 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


word is 7ri/€v/xa, “ pneuma.” The word wew, translated “blow,” 
is really “ breathe ”; or, since it is from the same root as Trvev^a } 
means the operation of the pneuma, which in outward manifesta¬ 
tion is after the nature of breathing. 

Again, , translated “ sound,” signifies more properly 

“ voice ”; and lastly, vna yet, rendered “ goeth,” is really “ leads.” 

Thus the meaning of Christ's explanation to Nicodemus is this. 
There are certain conditions on which a human being must enter 
before he can become partaker of the salvation which Christ came 
to bring. The entrance on these conditions he calls a birth; and 
he describes it as “ a birth from above,” or “ a birth into the 
pneuma.” He says that the analogy is very exact between the 
ordinary fleshly birth into the flesh, and the pneumatic birth into 
the pneuma. He then goes on to describe the sensational experi¬ 
ences which will follow the birth into pneumatic life. He says 
that the pneuma operates according to its will; that when it 
breathes into a person, that person becomes distinctly conscious of 
its presence, feels its motions, and hears its voice within him, 
prompting him with its suggestions. He cannot tell from whence 
this presence, this motion, this suggesting voice, comes; nor does 
he at all know to what it will lead him, if he follows its prompt¬ 
ings. All he knows is, that there it is,—that the suggestion is 
distinctly pneumatic “ from above,” and that he must instantly 
and implicitly obey it. 

“ Thus is every one who has been born of the pneuma,” says 
Christ; or, in other words, “ This will be found to be the experi¬ 
ence of all who shall have entered into sympneumatic conditions.” 

It will be the universal testimony of all who have already en¬ 
tered upon these conditions, or who shall enter upon them in the 
future, that Christ’s description to N’icodemus was accurate and 
exact in every particular. 

Nor can His description be adequately explained in any other 
way. 

It was doubtless the want of this pneumatic experience on the 
part of our translators which led them to imagine that Christ, 
when describing to Nicodemus the action of the pneuma, was in¬ 
tending to introduce a popular illustration from the phenomenon 
of the wind, as an analogy of some vague spiritual process to 
which it is difficult to see how the illustration applies. See 
Postscript at the end of the Appendix. 

John xx. 22 : “ He breathed upon them, and saith to them, 
Eeceive a holy influx.” 

Acts ii. 4 : “ They were all filled with a holy influx.” The 
term ay lov, “holy,” so often used in connection with pneuma, 
when it is equivalent to influx, is employed to designate the 
source from whence it comes, as well as the quality of which it 


APPENDIX II. 


469 


partakes; in order to distinguish it from the unholy or unclear 
influx which comes from the lower invisible world. 

Acts viii. 17-19: “They laid their hands on them, and they 
received a holy influx. Now Simon, having observed that the 
influx which was holy was imparted through the imposition of the 
hands of the apostles, offered them money, saying, Give me also 
this authority, that upon whomsoever I may lay my hands, he 
may receive a holy influx.” 

Acts x. 38: “ Jesus, who was from Nazareth, whom God 
anointed with a holy pneuma and with a force.” 

Acts xix. 2, 6 : “ Having found certain disciples, he said to 
them, Did you, on accepting the faith, receive a holy influx 1 
And they said to him, Nay, not even did we hear if there be such 
a thing as a holy influx. . . . And Paul having laid his hands 
on them, the influx which was holy came upon them, and they 
spake with tongues, and expounded.” 

1 Cor. ii. 13: “ Which things also we speak, not in words 
taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by pneumatic in¬ 
flux ; putting pneumatic influxes together, and comparing them 
one with another.” 

St Paul here distinctly disclaims for the teacher of Christ’s 
religion the mere intellectual knowledge which is drawn from 
human sources of wisdom, and asserts for him an internal afflatus 
and direction ; though, at the same time, he admits the necessity 
and importance of correcting the human liability to mistake by 
comparing different influxes, or, as expressed elsewhere in the 
New Testament, by “ trying the influxes, whether they be of 
God.” It is so easy and common for the evil ones to simulate a 
divine influx, that it is necessary to be constantly on the watch 
so as to detect and avoid a false afflatus. 

1 Cor. vii. 40 : “ She is more blessed, if she remain thus, in my 
opinion; and I think that I have also a divine influx on the 
matter.” 

1 Cor. xv. 44, 45 : “ There is a psychic body, and there is a 
pneumatic body. Thus also it has been written: The first man 
Adam reached as far as a living psyche, the last Adam as far as a 
life-giving pneuma.” 

Gal. iii. 3 : “ Having entered upon the life of the pneuma, will 
ye end in going back to the life of the flesh 1 ” 

Gal. v. 16-18 : “ Go about under the influence of the pneuma, 
that ye may not perform the desire of the flesh. For the flesh 
cherishes desires in opposition to the pneuma, and the pneuma in 
opposition to the flesh; and these are antagonistic to each other, in 
order that ye may not do those things which ye may naturally 
desire. But if ye be guided by the pneuma, ye are above earthly 
law.” 


470 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


That is, the promptings of the pneuma will render you inde¬ 
pendent of earthly law, since you will be obedient to the higher 
divine law of the pneuma. 

1 Thess. v. 19 : “ Do not stifle the influx of the pneuma.” 

That is, when you feel the promptings of the pneumatic voice 

within you, beware of hesitating or refusing to obey its impulse. 

Heb. vi. 4-6 : “ As regards those who have been once thoroughly 
enlightened, and who have experienced the gift which is from 
above, and have been made partakers of the divine pneuma, and 
have consciously felt a helpful voice from God, and the forces of an 
age yet to come, and have fallen away, it is impossible to raise 
them up anew again to a change of mind, since they are crucifying 
afresh to themselves the Son of God, and putting Him to an open 
shame.” 

2 Pet. i. 21 : “Not by a man’s own impulse was a prophecy 
ever framed ; but holy men of God spake under the influx of a holy 
pneuma.” 

Jude 19 : “ These are they who banish themselves, being psychic, 
having no pneuma.” 

What the apostle here means is, that since the pneuma is the 
seat of immortal life, those who entirely devote themselves to an 
existence no deeper than that of the psyche, practically extinguish 
within themselves the pneuma, and so cut themselves off from the 
higher life of immortality. 

This, however, can only be as regards the conscious continuity 
of individual existence; the pneuma is of the essence of the Deity, 
and therefore is, in its essential principle, immortal, and can never 
perish. 


NOTE T. 

ON THE RESTORATION OF TRUE CHRISTIANITY. 

Chapter xxii. page 372. 

“ It was the unfaithfulness of the early Christian Church which 
healed the deadly wound” 

The impulse which led to the reformation of Christendom three 
hundred years ago, was undoubtedly a good and true one. The 
abominations, which had resulted from the utter inversion of true 
Christianity throughout the entire pale of Christendom, had become 
so flagrant and outrageous, that the only wonder is that men should 
have endured it so long. 

The great fault of the Reformation, however, and that which 
rendered its efforts practically futile, was, that those who sought 


APPENDIX II. 


471 


thus to restore the Church to purity did not probe the evil deep 
enough, or trace the stream to its very source. They merely went 
back to the fourth century; they ought to have gone back to 
Christ. Whilst striving, therefore, to clear away the corrupting 
accretions which had defiled the truth, they left untouched the 
essence of the pollution. Thus, cherishing such fundamental errors 
as the dogma of the Trinity, the doctrine of propitiatory sacrifice, 
the infallible inspiration of the Bible, and so forth, they failed 
altogether in restoring to mankind the true religion which Christ 
came to bring. 

They removed, it is true, a great deal of the overlying mud, but 
they did not bring to light the “ pearl of great price ” which re¬ 
mained buried beneath the accretion. 

That great work has been reserved for the present generation; 
and with its reappearance we may hope for the restitution of 
Christ’s saving power. 

It may be well to point out here that, unlike the later creeds, 
the original record of Christian faith, contained in what is known 
as “ The Apostles’ Creed,” may still be held as teaching nothing 
which is not, if rightly understood, absolutely and entirely true. 
It has been divided by the Church for purposes of dogma into 
three separate sections; but as originally written it was in a single 
paragraph. 

“ I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and 
earth ” (that is, “ I believe in God, the Father-Mother ”). Al¬ 
mighty is always equivalent to Shaddai, the Divine Feminine, 
“Maker of the invisible and visible worlds, and in Jesus Christ 
His only Son ” (that is, the only biune man), “ wlyD was conceived 
of a holy pneuma, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius 
Pilate, was crucified dead and buried ; He descended into hell ” 
(i.e., went down into the lower region of the invisible world) ; “ the 
third day He rose again from the dead ” (i.e., to sow the seed of 
His pneumatic body on earth); “ He ascended into heaven ” (i.e., 
into the upper region of the invisible world); “ He sitteth at the 
right hand of God the Father-Mother ” (i.e., He is exalted above 
all as being the express image of the biune God); “ from thence 
He shall come again at the end of the age, to judge the quick and 
the dead ” (i.e., to separate between, or to bring about the crisis, 
as the Greek word translated “judge” means, between the quick 
— i.e., those who accept the quickening pneuma,—and the dead— 
i.e., those who reject it). “I believe in the holy pneuma; the 
holy universal ecclesia ” (i.e., the holy gathering together, as ecclesia 
means, of those who accept Him from universal mankind); “the 
common sharing of saints ” (i.e., in the pneuma) ; “ the resurrection 
of the body ” (i.e., the pneumatic body); “ and the life everlasting. 
Amen.” 


472 


SCIENTIFIC RELIGION. 


To every one of these statements we give in our hearty and loyal 
allegiance; and to the truths therein set forth we confidently look 
for the regeneration of the human race. 


POSTSCRIPT. 

Since writing the above notes, an incident has occurred in the 
writer’s experience, which it appears to him incumbent to relate, 
inasmuch as it illustrates the action of the “ pneuma,” as described 
in Note S, page 463, apropos of Christ’s explanation to Nicodemus. 
At the same time, it affords another practical instance of the respi¬ 
ratory sensitiveness described in Note 0, page 445. 

On Friday, December 16, 1887, the writer was asked to visit 
two poor persons living next door to each other, both of whom 
were seriously ill. The one case was that of a woman, about 
sixty years of age, who had been confined to her bed for ten days, 
quite unable to move, and suffering severely from acute pain at the 
base of the spine and in the loins. The other was that of a man, 
sixty-five years old, who had a sharp attack of bronchitis. Having 
applied the ordinary natural remedies to suit each case, the writer 
returned home. About 5 a.m. on the following morning he was 
awakened from sleep by a sensation of the respiratory motion, 
which he has learnt to recognise distinctly as a sympneumatic 
descent. Opening himself to the voice of the pneuma, he became 
aware of the intimation that he was to rise at once and visit the 
two patients. What was to be the object of his visit h e did not 
know; but the command was clear, and he immediately followed 
it. On entering the woman’s house, he found her in much the 
same state as on the previous day, and still unable to move through 
pain. He told her that he felt he had been divinely sent to assist 
her cure, and she must, implicitly obey whatever he ordered her to 
do. He then passed his left hand gently down her back, at the 
same time taking her right hand in his. As soon as he touched 
the small of the back, he felt the strange vibratory motion affecting 
his whole system, and his inner consciousness became impressed 
with the conviction that he was to tell her to get up immediately 
and walk about. Accordingly, he did so ; and at once, to her own 
astonishment and that of the other persons present, she rose from 
the ground, on which she had been lying, and guided by his right 
hand, which still retained its hold of hers, she walked up and down 
the room several times without the slightest effort or sensation of 
pain. She declared herself feeling quite well, and expressed a 



APPENDIX II. 


473 


desire to go to work. However, he advised her to keep quiet and 
warm, and not to be surprised if the pain returned in a measure 
again. 

He then went to the house of the other patient, quite prepared 
to do the same for him if the indications of the pneuma directed 
him. No sooner, however, had he taken his hand than he felt all 
influx leave him, and he knew that this case was not one in which 
he was intended to act spiritually. He was therefore obliged to 
content himself with administering ordinary injunctions, and offer¬ 
ing words of sympathy and encouragement. 

The next day—Sunday, December 18—he visited both patients. 
He found the woman lying on the ground as before, and she had 
had a slight, but only slight, return of her former pain. This time 
she rose without his assistance when he ordered her to do so; and 
after walking about the room for a little while, she again felt 
relieved entirely. 

The man was evidently much worse, and again the writer could 
feel no influx to aid him. The following day, Monday the 19th, 
the woman was perfectly well and about her ordinary work; and 
the man was dead. 


THE END. 









































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